You are here

Suggested Listening

9 January, 2015 - 10:52
Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/2ad74b7b-a72f-42a9-a31b-7e75542e54bd@3.74

Monophony

  • Here is an excerpt from James Romig's Sonnet 2, played by John McMurtery.
  • A Bach unaccompanied cello suite
  • Gregorian chant
  • Long sections of "The People that Walked in Darkness" aria in Handel's "Messiah" are monophonic (the instruments are playing the same line as the voice). Apparently Handel associates monophony with "walking in darkness"!

Homophony

  • A classic Scott Joplin rag such as "Maple Leaf Rag" or "The Entertainer"
  • The "graduation march" section of Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance No. 1"
  • The "March of the Toreadors" from Bizet's Carmen
  • No. 1 ("Granada") of Albeniz' Suite Espanola for guitar
  • The latest hit tune by a major pop solo vocalist
  • The opening section of the "Overture" Of Handel's "Messiah" (The second section of the overture is polyphonic)

Polyphony

  • Pachelbel's Canon
  • Anything titled "fugue" or "invention"
  • The final "Amen" chorus of Handel's "Messiah"
  • The trio strain of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever", with the famous piccolo countermelody
  • The "One Day More" chorus from the musical "Les Miserables"
  • The first movement of Holst's 1st Suite for Military Band

Heterophony

  • There is some heterophony (with some instruments playing more ornaments than others) in "Donulmez Aksamin" and in "Urfaliyim Ezelden" on the Turkish Music page.
  • The performance of "Lonesome Valley" by the Fairfield Four on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack is quite heterophonic. (Old-style blues owes more to African than toWestern traditions.)