About The Role of texture in French spectral music by Kari E Besharse - Chapter #2

Chapter 2 - Texture in the twentieth century

Defining texture

“If you run your hand across wooden desk, you perceive one texture, if you run your hand across a carpet or a purring cat; you feel quite a different texture. In visual art, the definition for texture is “the surface quality or appearance of a work; how the surface feels or how a work looks like it would feel. Texture, one of the formal art elements, can be experienced by the senses of sight and touch…” (The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopaedia including Atlas, s.v. “texture”)
According to The New Harvard Dictionary of Music texture is “the general pattern of sound created by the elements of a work or a passage.” The entry goes on to discuss traditional textures such as polyphony and homophony, and then indicates that the ‘other aspects of texture include spacing, tone colour [see also Orchestration], loudness, and rhythm. The terms used with respect to these aspects of texture are most often rather imprecise adjectives such as sparse, thin, dense, and thick.” p. 27/28

Perception of Texture

"Perception allows us to distinguish differences in objects, and to organise which objects fo together and which do not. In terms of aural perception, all sounds that we hear enter our ears as an undifferentiated collection of sound waves. Our neurological system must then parse this into logical vertical and horizontal groupings which can be cognised, and if necessary, acted upon (Albert Bregman and James K. Wright, “Auditory Stream Segregation and the Control of Dissonance in Polyphonic Music”, Contemporary Music Review 2 (1987) : 69) p. 28

“The way our auditory system parses and groups sound is extremely important to the study musical texture.
Albert Bregman, a researcher at McGill, has studied this process extensively , both in the realm of abstract sound and music. He has termed the process of parsing and grouping sounds into simultaneous and sequential mixtures audio scene analysis. The term auditory stream is used to described a layer of sounds that succeed each other temporally. Bregman and James K. Wright relate the simultaneous and sequential combinations to the harmonic and melodic components of musical texture: ‘if the horizontal force that creates the sequential patterns that we hear, which their melodic properties of pitch order and rhythm, and it is the vertical force that creates perceived qualities such as timbre and consonance and dissonance that emerge from the fusion of simultaneous components into a single sound’ (Ibid, 73) Aural perception occurs when we are listening to music, and controls how we group separate parts into a unified whole. Audible processes that create changes in listener perception are essential elements in the shaping of form. According to music theorist Wallace Berry, “Changes in texture…are often among the most readily perceptible and appreciable in the experience of music” (Wallace Berry, Structural Functions in Music (New York: Dover publications, 1987,189). The subconscious parsing that goes on in our auditory system takes place regardless of whether we are listening to music by Mozart or music by Penderecki. p. 29 [THIS COULD BE AN EXPLANATION TO JUSTIFY THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COLOURS (IN CIRCLES)]

Composition of Texture

In music, texture is on one hand a compositional device that allows composers to deploy their musical ideas into vertical and temporal sound-space. On the other hand, it also has to do with how different sounds or musical streams are grouped together. Composers have invented different types of textures as a way of grouping and controlling the perception of different musical elements. It is the steel girder frame onto which musical ideas and processes involving pitch, harmony, timbre, and rhythm are attached. Through the employment of texture, composers can manipulate how the listener will perceive their ideas over time, on both local and global scales.
In the 20th century, composers have explored expanded notions of vertical and temporal space through the element of texture. For many composers, composition itself has become sculptural, and for some, even architectural. Many 20th century composers begin their works with specific ideas about texture, involving aspects such as spacing, density, range, and the interaction of layers. Considering how this plays out in the ears and mind of the listener is another story, and whether or nor the composer’s intension are completely received by the listener (and whether it ultimately matters) is a philosophical argument.” p. 30

Analysis of texture

Texture is an extremely complex musical parameter because every single element of music contributes to it in some way, although not on an equal basis.

Texture is the organisation of the individual lines or parts at any given point in a piece of music into meaningful relationships that are perceived by the listener. Our perception of texture depends upon the overall density, timbre, harmony, melody, rhythm, and the degree of interaction between the individual parts at any given time in a piece of music. Te texture can be organised in: (1) the density and spacing of voices, and (2) the interaction of voices. Wallace Berry in Structural Functions in Music, describes these categories as the qualitative and quantitative aspect of texture: ‘Of necessity in the analysis of textural qualities is the evaluation of various kinds of interrelations and interactions among textural components… (Ibid., 184.185)’
Observing the qualitative aspect of texture allows us to categorise texture into types such as contrapuntal, or homophonic. Changes in density and spacing can help us recognise the categories as well but can also help us see how a certain passage of music is contributing to the form of the piece, for example, whether the passage is intensifying or relaxing.
Isolated parameters such as timbre, pitch, and rhythm also contribute to vertical or horizontal density and to the interaction between Voces which in turn determines texture type. Foe example, more pitches sounding at one time contribute to a greater textural density; their distribution influences vertical spacing. The parameters of rhythm and duration also influence density and are extremely important in how we hear different voices interact. For example, in contrapuntal textures, the attacks of different voices can line up at times, but often, one note may be sustained while another creates a rhythmic dialogue.” p. 31/32

Timbre and Texture

Basic Texture types

    monophony
        The simplest texture type of all implies one melodic line or “one sound” by itself. However, if we think monophony as a single auditory stream made up of successive pitches or successive timbres, then more possibilities present themselves. In many works of the twentieth century, we can find numerous cases where a single melodic line is broken up across multiple instruments in order to emphasise the element of timbre. Tone-color melody. P. 42

    Homophony
        In the first, a melodic line is accompanied by a subordinate part (or parts) that generally plays chords. In this case, the main line is usually rhythmically independent of the accompanying parts. In the second category, chordal homophony, all instruments generally move in the same rhythm and the top voice is given slightly more importance (DeLone, 110-111) P.42

    Polyphony
        According to Berry, counterpoint “denotes a condition of interlinear interaction involving intervallic content, direction rhythm, and other qualities or parameters of diversification. Jane Clendinning echoes this view by by writing “simply being constructed from superimposed lines, however, does not qualify a composition as “contrapuntal.” Implicit in that term is the idea that the lines are combined according to some system that controls their harmonic interaction.
        Towards the end of the 19th century, composers such as Wagner and Scriabin incorporated more counterpoint into their music, creating more linear chromaticism and blurring relationships between harmonics, stretching the tonal system to its limits. Many composers such as Stravinsky, Webern, Schoenberg, Carter and Hindemith revised the Baroque period, borrowing contrapuntal styles and techniques. According to DeLone, although Manu 20th century composers create seemingly complex textures, they are often based on a two-part contrapuntal framework. “The fact that a composition’s structure may be geared to two fundamental voices, as shown previously, does not prohibit the inclusion of other parts or voices of an essentially duplicating, reinforcing, or coloristic role.In the 20th century composers began to stretch the bounds of what exactly could hold together as a single part, and also began to experiment with blurring the independence of voices. According to Berry, “directional, intervallic, and rhythmic conformity or disparity” are the main factors that contribute to the independence or blending of voices. However, “factors of dissonance, imitation (motivic parallelism in temporal separation), colour, spatial distance and compression, dynamic or articulative distinction” also contribute. p. 45

    Heterophony
        Texture as motive
                This new interest in sound and timbre, wedded with new orchestration techniques, elevated the element of texture to a primary element of 20th century composition. p. 49

Inventions of New Texture Type in the Twentieth Century

Composers also began to create ambiguous relationships between lines through techniques such as frequent voice crossings and adding many instruments together to create new timbres.
Electronic music and technological development furthered the exploration of new textural ideas by bringing about many changes in the way that composers thought of sound itself and the compositional process. Studio tapes techniques such as layering, cutting and splicing were extremely important catalysts for the creation of new texture types. Varèse in particular was interested in creating music that was not subject to traditional laws of melody and meter. He was among the first to create large static blocks of sound by combining instruments into sonorities for their overall sound rather than for a harmonic or background function. Ligeti and Penderecki, pioneers of soundmass composition, were directly influenced by time they spent in the electronic music studio. Ligeti said, “ The idea of micro polyphonic webs was a sort of inspiration that I got from working in the studio, putting pieces together layer by layer.” Penderecki said “I think my ideas, using the cluster, using ‘noise’, discovering new ways go playing an instrument, came from working in that studio, not from staying others.” p. 51

All these ideas contributed to an unprecedented development in texture . The idea that by layering many sounds on top of one another, the inner, specific details of the sounds are lost and, instead, the global characteristics of the whole are perceived [perception] The first category, additive textures, are many individual sounds which contributes to the global sound rather than being tracked individually. p. 52

Timbre Vs. Texture

In a painting, careful placement of colour has an influence on how we perceive a texture. Looking at an impressionist painting by Securat or Monet at close range, we can see the individual brushstrokes and distinct patches of colour, but when one steps back, the colours blur together into larger shapes, and we experience a new colour as a result of the individual colours adding together. Similarly, in a musical work, individual instrumental timbres played at the ame time will influence how we hear texture. We perceive the individual instrumental timbres being added together, creating a new ensemble timbre. When used this way, timbre is an additive property. In the process of building a texture, new timbres are created from many individual timbres, so timbre also becomes a multidimensional physical property that is emergent in additive textures.” p. 53

Additive Textures

The emergent characteristics of an additive texture are the sum of all of the individual constituent elements. So, instead of hearing individual musical lines of timbres, one hears a blurred mass of pitches. Timbres, and rhythms. This allows composers to focus on the creation of emergent aspects such as vertical and temporal density, spacing, timbre and harmony and to manipulate these aspects through the course of a work. The flow of time in works that incorporate these textures is usually durational rather than rhythmic or metrical. Gwenyth Roberts states that soundmass composers “attempt to suppress or suspend any feeling of meter of rhythmic patterns. They seems to be thinking in terms of larger unmeasured spans of time.” There are two main types of additive texture: soundmass and micropolyphony. Soundmass and micropolyphony have frequently been used interchangeably in the past, but I believe that they should be separate categories. I propose using soundmass to describe textures in which many individual notes contribute to a more static block of sound that is essentially chordal in nature. I propose using micropolyphony to describe textural blocks in which the many layers are in some type of polyphonic relationship, meaning that they are moving against each other to create a mass with great internal motion. p. 54/55

Soundmass textures

In a soundmass, many individual notes played by many individual instruments add together to form a large block or band of sound, basically a chord whose spacing and density obscures the nature of the individual voices. p. 58

For example, in Ligeti’s Atmospheres for large orchestra, separate waves for each of the fifty-six strings are frequently used. The wind and brass sections are also large, so some pages have well over sixty octaves. In some scores, it ir relatively easy to see groupings of instruments, but in other scores, the large amount of visual material makes it difficult to segment groupings. P. 59/60

Micropolyphonic Textures

Whereas a soundmass represents a static block of sound, micropolyphoniy implies motion. The composite rhythm, pitch and timbre of the individual notes add up to create a mass with great internal motion. These equivalent masses can be produced through many different means such as counterpoint, stochastic process and indeterminacy. György Ligeti, explored the ramifications of micropolyphony more than the others.
    ‘I knew that I could compose a music without a melody, with rhythm, a music in which the figures - many swarming little figures - would no longer be recognisable as details but were entwined in one another, intermingled with one another, in which the colours would shimmer and iridesce.’ (Ligeti quoted in Ursula Sturzbecher, Werkstaatgespräche mim Komponisten (Cologne: Musikverlage Hans Gerig, 1971), 35; quoted and translated in Amy Bauer, “Compositional Process and Parody in the Music of György Ligeti” (PhD. diss., Yale University, 1997), 5) p. 60

“Ligeti’s original idea for micropolyphony came from electronic music studio, where he took advantage of the psychoacoustic phenomenon of “smearing”. This phenomenon is another limitation of our auditory mechanism; when two or more tones follow each other very rapidly, we cannot separate then and they are blurred together. Ligeti says: ‘When I want to work with the phenomenon of smearing I must take into consideration that each instrument is able to play tone successions no faster than 1/16 of a second…if I want to compose with smearing, I must interweave a several voices with one another… I chose the term “micropolyphony” for the technique of weaving many voices.’ p. 61