The confusion here is that there are three dominant textures for music -
homophonic and polyphonic are the dominant two in the history of Western
music since the Renaisance.  There is however, a third "heterophony".

Homphonic music is a single line which dominates other lines, and whose
counterpoint is created by switching which voice is carrying the line at a
particular moment.

Polyphonic music is where there is no single line which is dominant.  This
does not mean many voices need be playing.  The Bach Cello suites are
polyphonic.

What both polyphony and homophony share in common is that all of the lines
are kept rhythmically unified.  There is one frame that every voice relates
to.  It may be ahead or behind that frame, but its time is in reference to
it.

- - -

The story of heterophony in the West has yet to be written, some of the
details are lost to us, and some of the early music of it is obscure.
Heterophony was never the dominant texture in the West.

Heterophonic effects were still used however - classical style rubato
is, in essence, a heterophonic effect.  The filling in of the figured
bass offers many chances for use of heterphonic effects.  Beethoven's
interuptive entrances carry with them a bit of the heterophonic - two
famous ones are the dying away adagio figure in V(I) and the early horn
entrance.

The modern history of Heterophony begins with Chopin and Berlioz.

Chopin's use of rhythmic frame breaking between the accompanying voices
and the melodic voice is an attempt to establish a heterophonic tension
between the two.  The trochic feet of the melody are often offset from the
polyphonic texture of the accompanying figures.  He emphasizes this by
placing the resolutions of the harmony with the accompanying voices.

Berlioz's use of heterphonic effects was more haphazard - he wanted
there to be outbursts "unpredictable by any rhtyhm", he wanted multiple
orchestras and other effects.  But we do not look at his music as being
"heterophonic" and I am unaware of anyone seriously attempting a dolby
surround recording of these effects.

The next composers in the chain are Liszt and Wagner.  Particularly Wagner.
Wagner's highly layered style is key feature of heterophonic music - each
layer progressing according to its own inner logic.  Wagner also learned a
great deal from Chopin - though mostly through Liszt - and applied this in
the offsetting of the vocal lines against the "unending melody" in the
orchestra.

But the greatest spur to the idea of rhythmic offseting was the dominance
of homphonic and polyphonic texture - and with Brahms the near unification
of the two.  For decades it had been thought that there were two "styles"
of writing - one derrived from Bach, the other derrived from Mozart and
Haydn.

- - -

Mahler's contribution to the situation was the systematic exploration of
heterophonic devices within this newly unified homophonic/polyphonic
texture.

What he wanted, and what several others after him would want, was the
maximum separation of voices.

One tool to getting this is non-blended, that is dissonant, lines.
Dissonances are easier to keep separate, and therefore aid the ability
to keep the lines separate.

The other tool is to rhythmically offset the lines from each other.
Making each one have its own accents, its own meter.

One device to effect this is to have on voice moving continuously, while
having each of the others have pauses, or silences between clusters of
notes.  The continuous voice will be followed through its length, with the
others coming forward when they are playing, but silently kept track of
when they are not.

The basic schema is something known to Haydn, activity attracts the ear,
and if a voice has a period of activity, after which it suspends then
another voice can switch from inactivity to activity:

let me use ^ for active sounding music, and - for sustaining sounding
music.


1 -------^^^^^^^^^^^^
2 ^^^^^^^^^----------

during the overlap there is a question as to which voice is dominant.
One can also:

1 -----------^^^^^^^^
2 ^^^^^^^^^----------

This because in active sounding music one can have figures which, if
continued, become sustaining.

This ambiguity is Hadyn's great composition mechanism.

Now let us imagine one merely does this:

1            ^^^^^^^^
2 ^^^^^^^^^----------

The pause allows the second voice to enter, and not sound like it is
attached to the first.  It had been used before, but by the 8th symphony
Mahler is using it almost constantly.  And not merely with two voices,
but with several.  And not merely with silence, but by making use of the
registers of instruments, layering each on the other, using all of the
gradations of how figuration works.

- - -

The idea that there would be many activities, each one pursuing its own
inner clock, and heard and experienced simultaneously was one that was
coming into currency, because the urban-industrial setting produces this
soundscape naturally.  Instead of an agarian environment where all sound
is basically synchronised, there was a growing need for expressing a world
where each thing carried its own clock, and the normal course of activities
overlapped without regard to others.  We needed music about being alone,
in public.

It should be noted that the last flirtation with heterophonic music in
the west had come during the urbanising period of the 1500's and 1600's -
before the court and the church would come to dominate commissions and
aesthetics.  Their social project was to sell unity - unity of nation,
church, activity.  Harmonious order wants harmoniously ordered music to
go with it, rather than the band like heterophonic effect.

- - -

This aspect of separation appealed to the members of the Second Viennese
school.  But in general they desired to keep a unified rhythmic frame,
and so pursued the root of making that frame more complicated.  Bela Bartok
in his earlier works pursued this end as well.  The neo-classicism of
Stravinski would rely on this same complexity of frame.  Much of Darmastadt
would be devoted to this concept.  Their use of layering would be in
polychords - different layers in different keys.  Much of Neo-Classicism
makes use of this concept rigorously.

But mainly 12 tone schools - and especially serialism - would turn
away from heterophonic effects.  This is one of the reasons why much of
Schoenberg's pantonal output sounds much more "Modern" than students four
generations removed.  As alien sounding as Penderecki's *Threenody* is - it
is clearly governed by a single rhythmic frame.  So too is Lutoslawski's
mature output, and Gorecki's early works, and Rochberg's serial works, and
Powell, and Babbit, and Davidovski, and Martino. Boulez's orchestral works
are about as heterophonic as Wagner's.

- - -

Those who brought industrialism into music - let's call it Futurism for the
moment - of course went to heterophony naturally.  They were depictionalist
painters in sound, and what they were depicting was heterophonic.

The composer who, unwatched by the rest of the world, was to place the most
emphasis on heterophony in the context of traditiona musicianship would be
Charles Ives.  His heterophony relied less on offsetting - which was the
dominant trend from Chopin - and more on each line having its own rhythmic
pulse.  His frames are basically aligned, but each voice is pulsing at its
own pace through that line.  Because of the loss of offset - he also had
to pursue a more dissonant style.  Mahler knew some of Ives music from the
sojourn in America - whether Ives knew Mahler's music I do not know, though
it seems likely he would have heard *of* it.

 From Ives comes much of Carter's directions in metrical offsetting his
Cello Sonata and early String Quartets, from experimentalism in general
would come Nancarrow.

- - -

Another branch of heterophony in the West is Jazz.  The native musics
of Africa often use heterphonic rhythmic effects against homphonic vocal
effects.  In jazz - the desire to create the "soloist texture" pushed
towards heterophony relatively early on.  Bop would codify the means by
which this was done: polychords would be related to modes, and the two
groups would be kept separate by the modulation of modes against
polychordal material.  While Davis and Coltrane are often mentioned in
the context of Bop, one of the composers who should be examined more
carefully for heterophonic effects is Mingus.

- - -

So rather than Mahler being completely new, he was the flowering, in the
West, of an idea whose time had come.

Stirling S Newberry
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