Texture is a word used a lot to describe music, but it can often be difficult to understand. We can say a piece of music has an open or closed texture or a thick or thin texture, for instance. We can also use more formal terms, such as monophonic or polyphonic, to describe musical texture. But what kind of music do these words describe?
In this post, we’ll look at all of the different types of texture in music. But first, what exactly is texture?
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In music, texture is basically a way to describe how the music or sound is organized.
It can be thought of as how many layers a piece of music has – it’s how much stuff is going on at once.
Tempo, melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre (check out our post on what is timbre in music here) can all have an effect on texture, and so texture is closely related to the overall quality and sound of music.
Just like physical things – food, clothing, toys, buildings, etc. – have texture, so does music, although, because you can’t physically touch music, musical texture is characterized by sound instead.
As we mentioned above, texture can be described in a lot of different ways.
A piece of music has a thick texture if there are many layers of instruments, or a lot of melodies and harmonies being played at the same time.
A thin texture, on the other hand, is one where there are only a few instruments playing, or there are only one or two melodies and harmonies.
An open texture, or perhaps a wide or spacious texture, is when a piece of music has a large gap between the highest and lowest notes.
The opposite of this is called a closed or tight texture, and is where all of the singers or instruments are playing notes that are really close together.
However, the most common terms to describe texture in music all describe how many voices, or parts, a piece of music has, and how the melodic part relates to the harmonic parts.
As we covered above, there are a number of different ways to describe texture in music.
These terms are monophonic, homophonic, and polyphonic which we’ll take a look at next.
Monophonic texture is the simplest of the three main types of texture in music.
It consists of one melody, or tune, played or sung by a single person, or in unison.
There is no harmonic accompaniment, and no other music being made except for the melody.
The word monophonic comes from the Greek word ‘mono‘ which means “one”, and phonic means “relating to sound”, so monophonic texture literally means one sound being played.
Many simple songs we learn as children are monophonic – for example, the “Alphabet Song” or “Happy Birthday”.
Other famous examples include Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 1”, or the beginning to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”, both shown below: