I. WHAT IS "POLYPHONY?"
The peculiarity of the polyphonic style is that that portion of the music which accompanies the chief melody is no longer a series of chords as in folk-music, but a tissue of secondary melodies, like the chief one, and hardly less important. (This arises, as we have just suggested, from the necessity of giving each of the four voices or groups of voices,—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass,—something individual and interesting to do.) The difference between the two styles is apparent even to the eye, on the printed page. A folk-song, or any other piece in "homophonic" or "one-voiced" style, has the characteristic appearance of a line of notes on top (the melody), with groups of other notes hanging down from it here and there, like clothes from a clothes line (the accompaniment). A Bach fugue, in print, presents the appearance of four (or more) interlacing lines of notes. (See Figure IX.)
(a) Beginning of "Polly Oliver."
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While the dawn on the mountain was mist-y and grey,
(b) Passage from Bach Fugue in G-minor
"Well-Tempered Clavichord," Book I.
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FIGURE IX. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "HOMOPHONIC" AND "POLYPHONIC" STYLE.
Historically speaking, the first great culmination of the polyphonic style is found in the ecclesiastical choruses of Palestrina (1528-1594); but it was not until somewhat later that this style was applied to instrumental music. In the inventions, canons, preludes, toccatas, and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), we get the first great examples of polyphony as applied, not to merely ecclesiastical music, but to music which by its secular character and its variety of emotional expression is universal in scope.