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 [log in to unmask]