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From: etan@tellab1.UUCP (Nate Stelton)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: How do you hear polyphony
Message-ID: <360@tellab1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Aug-84 15:04:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: tellab1.360
Posted: Thu Aug  2 15:04:53 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 02:26:32 EDT
Organization: Tellabs, Inc., Lisle, Ill.
Lines: 41


I'm not a musicologist, just an amateur musician, so take the following
for what it's worth.

I feel that there are many different ways to hear polyphonic music, and
when one is able to experience more of these different ways, music
becomes even more of a euphoric enjoyment than ever before.  Here are
some of the ways that I have encountered.

1.  Melody analysis.  At the first few listenings of a certain piece, you learn
    the main voice (or a main voice), and everything around it simply
    gives that voice meaning.  Upon subsequent listenings, you hear other
    simultaneous melodies and compare them to the originally identified
    melody.  Such things are noted as parallel movement, contrary motion,
    and melody on top of ostinato (short repeating pattern).

2.  Harmonic analysis. If you sometimes tend to listen to harmonic
    content, you will always find that all the notes in one or more
    voices in a given measure give that measure some sort of harmonic
    'identity'.  Recognizing harmonic developement from measure to
    measure (good chord changes) through polyphony is a total rush!

3.  Rhythmic analysis.  Taking the first two ways (above) into account,
    where certain key notes (no pun intended) fall in relationship to
    time give certain passages a particular beat feel or syncopation.  If
    voice 1 tends to give tonics, dominants, or chodal components on a
    certain beat, and voice 2, t's, d's, etc. on another, those two beats
    together provide the accent scheme of that passage.  The fascinating
    thing about this is that this scheme was formed by two seemingly unrelated
    melodies.

I don't mean for people to think that all this is sort of an intellectual
masturbation while listening to your faves.  On the contrary, while one
simply listens mindlessly for pleasure, I perceive this to be going on in
the subconscience.

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I love music!!!

                         -etan
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