Music Video Lesson: What is Polyphony in Music?

Hi, Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com. Today's question is, what is meant by the term "polyphony"? You may have heard this before, and this is intrinsic to almost all the music we listen to today. But there was a time when all music was monophonic. Monophonic means one note at a time. The original written music was called Gregorian chant or plainsong, and it was liturgical text that was sung with embellishments and they were just one line at a time, and for a very long time, that's what the only written music was, one note at a time. Eventually, it evolved to something called organum. Organum, they would have two lines, usually in parallel that would embellish the melody a bit. Eventually, music developed more complexity where many lines of music, more than one note, finally, and that is what is meant by polyphony, where you have more than one note at a time. And virtually all the music we listen to today is polyphonic. It's hard to believe that it started off with just one line at a time, plainsong, monophonic music. Thank goodness it evolved to what we know and love today. So that is what is meant by polyphony. Thank's so much for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at virtualsheetmusic.com and liviningpianos.com.

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