polyphony
/pəˈlɪfəni/ noun
Forms polyphonies
- noun (music) Musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony).
- noun (literature) The quality of a text of being able to be read in more than one way. “the polyphony of a biblical passage”
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek πολυφωνία (poluphōnía); equivalent to poly- + -phony.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Multiplicity of sounds, as in the reverberations of an echo.
- noun Plurality of sounds and articulations expressed by the same vocal sign.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “polyphony”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details