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Texture
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Texture.
A term used when referring to the sound aspects of a musical structure. This may apply either to
the vertical aspects of a work or passage, for example the way in which individual parts or voices
are put together, or to attributes such as tone colour or rhythm, or to characteristics of performance
such as articulation and dynamic level. In discussions of texture a distinction is generally made
between homophony, in which all the parts are rhythmically dependent on one another or there is
a clearcut distinction between the melodic part and the accompanying parts carrying the harmonic
progression (e.g. most solo song with piano accompaniment), and polyphonic (or contrapuntal)
treatment, in which several parts move independently or in imitation of one another (e.g. fugue,
canon). Between these two extremes is a freepart style (Ger. Freistimmigkeit), characteristic of
much 19thcentury writing for the piano, in which the number of parts can vary within a single
phrase. The spacing of chords may also be considered an aspect of texture; so may the ‘thickness’
of a sonority as determined by the number of parts, the amount of doubling at the unison or octave,
the ‘lightness’ or ‘heaviness’ of the performing forces involved and the arrangement of
instrumental lines in an orchestral work.
Although textural control has been a major consideration for composers since the Middle Ages,
with the advent of twelvenote composition and serialism in the 20th century and the consequent
breakdown of the tonal system in Western art music, texture became an even more important
feature of composition. This tendency can be seen particularly in works of Webern, in works
(especially aleatory music) of Ives and Cowell and of Varèse, and in the distinctive textures of
Crumb and Ligeti.
The word does not have an exact equivalent in any other language; the etymologically related
Italian ‘testura’ and ‘tessitura’ refer to the register of a single part, usually vocal. Only the German
SATZ, which in certain contexts denotes contrapuntal organization (Dezimensatz – counterpoint
round the interval of a 10th) or partwriting style (Kantilenensatz – in the style of 14th and 15th
century song with a melodic upper voice and more ‘accompanimental’ lower voices), approaches
the meaning of texture.
Bibliography
A. Hopkins: Sounds of Music: a Study of Orchestral Texture (London, 1982, repr. 1993 as Sounds of the
Orchestra)
J.M. Levy: ‘Texture as a Sign in Classic and Early Romantic Music’, JAMS, xxxv (1982), 482–531
J. Dunsby: ‘Considerations of Texture’, ML, lxx (1989), 46–57
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