Music Theory: Timbre, Texture, Melody, Harmony, and Form

Timbre

A term referring to the character or quality to a musical sound separate from its pitch or dynamic.

Texture

The relationship between parts in the music.

Monophony

A single melody executed in multiple voices.

Homophony

Melody with a supporting accompaniment.

Polyphony

Multiple, distinct lines.

Heterophony

Several musical voices operating totally independently.

Melody

Pitched sounds arranged in musical time in accordance with given cultural conventions and constraints.

Conjunct

Distance between pitches is stepwise or small.

Disjunct

Characterized by melodic leaps or skips between notes, rather than stepwise, smooth movement.

Harmony

The simultaneous arrangement of pitches into chords, or groups of notes played at the same time.

Consonant

More pleasant and stable.

Dissonant

Harsher and filled with tension.

Functional Harmony

There is either a clear relationship or direction to a harmonic progression.

Nonfunctional Harmony

There is no clear relationship or direction to a harmonic progression.

Harmonic Rhythm

The rate at which harmony changes, often changes over time, either fast, slow or erratic.

Musical Form

Formal spaces are described with letters and defined by contrasting melodies or keys.

Sonata Form

A musical-rhetorical form composed of three main parts: Exposition, Development, Recapitulation.

Exposition

Two musical ideas are presented, a primary theme in the home key and a secondary theme in a different key.

Development

A highly unstable place where the composer explores a variety of keys and musical ideas.

Recapitulation

Repeat of the exposition.

Genre

Musical form is not the same as musical genre.

Absolute Music

Music understood as only representative of itself.

Programmatic Music

Artistic works capable of conveying an extra-musical narrative.

Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony

A significant Viennese composer of the nineteenth century, premiered in 1976 to mixed reviews.

Chromatic Slide

A chromatically descending passage or baseline, sometimes accompanied by an ascending element or pairs of descending perfect fourths distanced a step apart.