#SONORITY MUSIC DEFINITION PLUS#

As a simple example of this last bit, if a violin and a clarinet play the exact same line together, you may hear it as neither a violin, nor a clarinet, but some weird (or artistic) single new timbre that sounds a bit like both instruments. This doesn't necessarily mean it is one thing, it's just heard as if it was. A flute's timbre is basically 'the thing that I hear when I hear something as a flute, the thing that let's me know I'm not hearing a piano, or a violin, etc.' The thing about timbre, and what's slightly different about it compared to sonority pr texture, is that it tends to be heard as a single thing. Thus, I can speak of a 'perfect fifth sonority,' which means 'there are two voices sounding at the same time that are a perfect fifth away from each other.' You can see how this is somewhat related to 'timbre' and 'color' in that it's referring to a 'quality of sound,' it's just that we have more specific technical terms for this aspect of sound quality.ģ.) Timbre can often be used to describe the sound quality of a specific instrument, or a specific effect produced by that instrument. These are descriptions of how many musical things are there in a musical event and what are they doing in relation to one another.Ģ.) Sonority, while it can be used interchangeably with color and timbre, has a third meaning that is roughly analogous to interval or chord quality.

#SONORITY MUSIC DEFINITION PLUS#

Thus, when 4 people are singing different musical lines together, we call that a '4 part texture.' Or when you have melody plus an accompaniment of chords, we call that a 'homophonic texture.' If there is a lot of independence among the parts, where each line feels equally important and no one feels like it's the main one, we might call it a 'polyphonic' or 'contrapuntal' texture.

Texture can, but not always, refer to some sort of technical fact about the construction of the music. A lot of people will use 'color' to mean 'timbre' and 'sonority.' But let me provide some distinction.

I think, in truth, that a lot of these terms can be used interchangeably.

Sonority music definition