# Do you hear music polyphonically?



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

When you listen to a piece of music, do you hear it first and foremost as chords/accompaniment plus melody, or do you hear multiple voices playing off of each other? Perhaps if you listen to something multiple times, you begin to hear things that were hidden before. Maybe you've developed this skill over time, and now hear more voices at once than you could previously.

I'm aware that different listening methods are used for different genres and styles of music, so one hears the homogeneous timbres of a string quartet or a piano in a different way from the mixed timbres of a symphony orchestra, and I'm interested in how this relates as well.

There will be no poll on this thread, because I feel like I won't be able to predict everyone's response.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Picking out the different polyphonic lines in Bach was one of the first aural skills I consciously worked on when I started getting into CM, so polyphonic listening is an old habit with me.

Lately I've been going out of my way to listen in a more dramatic/event-based way, as I think I mentioned somewhere else.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> one hears the homogeneous timbres of a string quartet or a piano in a different way from the mixed timbres of a symphony orchestra


Yes, timbre and orchestration play a huge role in this question. Webern's orchestration of the ricecare from Bach's _Musical Offering_ is a fascinating case study in this regard:






In other arrangements of this piece--say, for harpsichord--the texture is so thick that it's hard not to hear the music primarily as a series of chords accompanying a melody. But Webern's orchestration is so alive with color (oh, that marvelous bass clarinet) that each voice emerges in exquisite detail.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I tend to take "melody" or the contour for granted; I listen harmonically, even with stuff that is not harmonic by design. I sometimes identify intervals. I dunno, it's all so second nature to me now. Like with Bartok's first SQ, the opening fugue is so weird harmonically, yet I am aware of the individual lines; in such cases where I'm in a "no-man's-land" of harmonic familiarity, I tend to fall back on just listening to the results of vertical sonorities, to at least identify some intervals. Melodies as such have less harmonic "meaning," they're just contours. But I like a good melody any day. Sometimes I'll switch over to listening to the horizontal contour, if it gets interesting.

In this sense, it's really more difficult for me to listen to Haydn, because there are identifiable vertical chords, as well as horizontal progressions, plus melody.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I think the answer depends on the music. If the music is polyphonic -- not necessarily self-conscious "baroque" counterpoint, but music with two or three melodic ideas occurring at the same time -- then I hear it that way. This is not to say I can easily follow all the voices of an even moderately complex fugue!

But some music is pretty much tune and chordal or figured accompaniment -- a lot of Mendelssohn's piano music, for instance, is this way. You can't hear something that's not there! Except in special circumstances, I tend to get impatient with this kind of music, at least outside of the pop genre.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Since it may be data useful to you, I'll contribute that I have no idea how I'm listening, at any time, to any music.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I'm with Ukko. Since I'm not trained in music, I do not hear "chords/accompaniment plus melody," but I try to follow the various instruments in order to hear "multiple voices" playing off each other, but as the music gets more complex or frantic, I often get lost and seem to hear the sum of it all, until I can get my bearings again. Sometimes my attention will drift from one instrument to another (particularly in string quartets or wind ensembles, I may experience difficulty in differentiating the instruments) and I have to remind myself to try to follow them all in parallel.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

*polyphonically (i.e. Horizontal vs. vertical)*, innate and / or heavily influenced and shaped from very early childhood. Blame Bartok, and only a little later, Bach, and then Schumann, if you must.

I always did better, more readily, in the horzontal ear training dictation, and the vertical dictations with even a modicum of voice-leading (if not truly 'contrapuntal') I access much more readily via that horizontal gear.

I was and am miserable and far less efficient when It comes to naming vertical chord after vertical with little else happening -- including that it makes me give near as much to a tinker's damn about whatever 'tune' on top usually goes along with that.

Because of this tic, what I write (when I write), I have yet to have thought of or have come to me a basic musical idea having anything remotely to do with what we call _A Chord Progression_ -- even that term has negative connotations for me bordering on anathema -- of promising less interesting and lesser quality music.

As to the solo instrument, homogenous or mixed instrumental approaches, I'm monotonous -- I listen to all of it predominantly in the horizontal, and even reflexively seek the horizontals in the voicing of a sequence of vertical chords.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I think I have a natural inclination toward listening polyphonically. I pay less attention to the overall harmonic structure and more to individual voice leading or movement and motives. About the only time I can recognize overall harmonic structure is if there is some abrupt or unexpected modulation, and then I am unlikely to be able to name the new key. The long progressions toward modulation tend to be more gradual, less noticeable to me. I can notice and appreciate harmonic structure if my focus is better than usual on a given listening. Annotations help.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I listen polyphonically whenever the music is polyphonic. For a lot of music there really isn't any appreciable or interesting motion in the inner lines, and in such cases it doesn't attract my attention. I especially like counterpoint that is not written to evoke harmonic progressions. Mussorgsky and Shostakovich often wrote that way.

Music in which I am constantly aware that the composer has a harmonic progression in mind tends to grate on me. To cite an example from art rock: I always disliked Genesis for that reason. Constant chordal rather than contrapuntal thinking. 

I have always like polymelody, writing in which there is more than one interesting and attractive melodic line. Rachmaninoff did this exceptionally well. Shostakovich too. The second theme of the latter's Quartet No. 5, first movement, especially the recapitulation, is one of my favorite examples. Each instrument has a beautiful line and they all maintain their individuality.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Often I listen without any particular attention to harmony, polyphony, or other musical structures. At times I try to hear the harmonic structure or the polyphonic lines. For me it seems easier to hear the polyphony, for example in Baroque works. I will say I often try to hear each voice in a string quartet and find that I cannot hear the viola when the structure is moderately dense or when the viola is playing chords with another instrument. I usually cannot determine whether a chamber work is a quartet or quintet. 

I think it's a bit interesting that my wife (violin) focuses vastly less on the harmony or polyphony in works than my daughter (cellist). My wife is used to playing the melody; whereas, my daughter tends to play the accompaniment (whether harmonic or polyphonic).


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## lupinix (Jan 9, 2014)

It usually depends on two things: the most obvious one, how many voices are there, I really can't hear all the separate lines of some late renaissance work for 30 voices or more, while in 3 or 2 voice polyphony its always easy to hear them

as for 4 to lets say 6 voices or so, it also depends much on the rhymical and melodic independence: If every voice has a complete own rhythm that makes it actually easier to distinguish them and if somewhere two voices have a lot of note against note moments that makes it a lot more difficult (but on the other hand mostly easier to listen to, especially if there is a text)
melodic independance is maybe not the best word for what I'm meaning, because in imitation the lines are melodicly dependant in a way but that makes it of course easier to hear the lines
I mean if the parts of melody which sound together don't blend or sound very similar or have a lot of triads which gives a more accompaniment like feeling and make it harder to know which lines does what


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## stevederekson (Jan 5, 2014)

It depends on the music. There are times where simultaneous lines of music are intended by the composer as a way of "adjectivizing" melody. Sometimes melody is composed of "injections" from different lines of music. Sometimes simply chords accompany, but most of the time, especially in symphonies, the accompaniment is made up of many lines.

Yet, I do not think much of it is intended to be consciously listened to. It is a way of flowering up the main line, of making it heard in a very specific way. The subconscious mind hears it and makes a mass out of the sound, and that produces the end result.

But, beautifully, the end result is different because of what the mind interprets as the main line. This can vary a lot from listen to listen.


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## Anterix (Jan 24, 2010)

I guess it depends on what is more appealing. Grosso modo the ear will look for melody and one counter melody. If it is not there the ear will look for other things. Some music even appear not to have a melody. Vide first part of Sound Off March for instance...


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Ukko said:


> Since it may be data useful to you, I'll contribute that I have no idea how I'm listening, at any time, to any music.


My sentiment entirely.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Polyphonically, which is probably the most common way due to the resemblance to spoken language. I wonder if it's also the most common way of composing.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

I don't know. 

I've never thought about it, really ...... so here goes ......

currently listening to Haydn's String Quartets Op 74 No 2 - second movement I was listening to the conversation between the four instruments, third movement I was listening to the flow of the melody and how it was changed as the music went along, now in the fourth movement, I can hear the melody and how the individual instruments are elaborating and extrapolating the melodic line and teasing each other to 'egg' each other on ..... almost like the braided channels on a meandering river (there's the geomorphology training from 30 years ago coming out!)

I'm almost about to start on other metaphors, so its a good thing that particular piece has stopped


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'm more polyphony-based. I really like pre-Baroque music for that reason. I also like listening for details, like the interplay between instruments or layers of rhythms. This is one thing that makes Bruckner's music attractive to me; all those understated layers of rhythms. I don't get as excited about Neopolitan 6ths, the Tristan chord, or Schoenberg's vagrant harmonies.


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## Guest (Jan 14, 2014)

Not sure. Isn't this like asking if I see polychromatically?

"No, just the red...so I struggle with zebra crossings!"

Assuming Mahlerian deliberately asked 'hear' not 'listen', I'd say it's difficult to become conscious of how I _hear_, but I can of course say that I _listen _poly- and mono-, depending what I turn my attention to.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

Before I began listening to classical music I had only listened to pop music, so the entire notion of proper polyphony was completely foreign to me. Because of that, I initially listened to classical music pretty much focused on melody.

I remember listening to the Goldberg Variations very early on and being completely bewildered by it. For my pop-music-melody-conditioned ears (and brain) this was probably a complete information overload and I couldn't make sense of it. I had not experienced anything like that with Beethoven or Schubert.

Over time, however, I developed a taste for polyphony, and eventually I became addicted to it. I listen _for_ polyphony in everything I listen to, and I have a strong preference for music that is polyphonically rich and dense. I find that it allows one to listen deep into the texture almost in a spatial fashion.

I usually find that more rewarding because with polyphony music, there's simply more there. Now, more doesn't necessarily equal better, and I also enjoy music that is not meant to be polyphonic and would suffer it it were.

Another wonderful thing about polyphonic music, I find, is that it's (for me at least) too complex to play it back in my head. I feel like I could hum and whistle entire symphonies by Beethoven from start to finish by just following the melody. I'd only be reproducing about 1/100th of the work, of course, but I still feel like I have it all stored in my memory.

With polyphonic works, however, I feel like they only really exist while I'm actually listening to them. It's music that, for me, cannot be broken down, understood and commited to memory, but rather that must be performed and listened to each and every single time for it to really be there.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> When you listen to a piece of music, do you hear it first and foremost as chords/accompaniment plus melody, or do you hear multiple voices playing off of each other? Perhaps if you listen to something multiple times, you begin to hear things that were hidden before. Maybe you've developed this skill over time, and now hear more voices at once than you could previously.
> 
> I'm aware that different listening methods are used for different genres and styles of music, so one hears the homogeneous timbres of a string quartet or a piano in a different way from the mixed timbres of a symphony orchestra, and I'm interested in how this relates as well.
> 
> There will be no poll on this thread, because I feel like I won't be able to predict everyone's response.


It's a good question. I find that I listen near polyphonically with Baroque, especially J S Bach's music. Maybe that's because his music was all about fugue and counterpoint, plus music training on my part. Later periods after that, I generally don't.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

ahammel said:


> Picking out the different polyphonic lines in Bach was one of the first aural skills I consciously worked on when I started getting into CM, so polyphonic listening is an old habit with me.
> 
> Lately I've been going out of my way to listen in a more dramatic/event-based way, as I think I mentioned somewhere else.


i advice for me? I'm quite good at hearing different melodies but I often get completely lost when I'm listening to fugues.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Piwikiwi said:


> i advice for me? I'm quite good at hearing different melodies but I often get completely lost when I'm listening to fugues.


Ear training, I'm sure you know, is another of those studies which are necessarily progressive, i.e. information and skills, one set prerequisite to the remainder... the learning is possible via cumulative built-upon graded steps. So you should go about this the same way.

Look into early polyphonic music, specifically for three voices (I'm sure you're good with two, ala the Bach two-part inventions.)
and work your ear by following those -- a lot of pre-baroque will not be fugues, in a way, so much the better.

Then progress to four voices.

You can do similar with the Bach Two-part inventions, then the three-part sinfonias.

With Bach's WTC, I'd go to book two for listening, simply because it is less familiar to most (and I think overall, much 'better' and better-written music) Start with the three voice pieces, progress to the four.

It has been generally said that few can track, wholly, five or six voiced fugues. Some of that includes the composers themselves, and I think when in earlier tonal styles, i.e. the additional voices get a bit obscured by their very numbers, and the listener's ear starts to hear and track harmony vs. horizontal lines.

The good ole standard colored pencil analysis of the Bach fugues, subject, countersubject, and tracing each separate voice with a different color, then listening with that marked score, will do the good ole standard and effective job the exercise has long been used for, and proven, to do.

Whether the first movement of Bartok's Music for Stringed instruments, percussion and celesta is a fugue or a canon is still a matter of academic debate (Good on Bela Bartok, I say!) but this is somewhat like dancing around the differences between a passacaglia and a chaconne -- they overlap, don't get hung up on it 
Following this contrapuntal piece, with its eleven note subject and many layers, with the score, might be easier than you think. The less familiar associations with common practice tonal harmony will not come up, nor be perhaps so "in your way."

Try also following, with score, the fantastic double inverted fugue of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.

The Bartok and Stravinsky in vocabularies outside your more usual listening habits might have your ears more open, "on the alert," so those may be easier for you to learn to follow than working from repertoire in more traditional harmony.

P.s. every year, undergraduate music students graduate from universities and conservatories, all having passed ear training exams which demanded of them successfully taking down a four-part chorale dictation, sight-singing and taking dictations in atonal and 12-tone lines. I'm sure many of them would tell you that when they began those studies, they never dreamed they would be able to do what they had just done when they reached the end of that course work and had passed that exam


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Diverging off topic a bit, but --



EdwardBast said:


> Music in which I am constantly aware that the composer has a harmonic progression in mind tends to grate on me. To cite an example from art rock: I always disliked Genesis for that reason. Constant chordal rather than contrapuntal thinking.


Yes, but without that chordal sensibility we wouldn't have had the wonderful four note 9/8 jam at the end of "Supper's Ready" -- four notes (or was it three? I forget.) over which it seems several dozens of chords work. Banks admits his weakness for chords, if it is a weakness.

Sorry - back on topic now.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

PetrB said:


> The Bartok and Stravinsky in vocabularies outside your more usual listening habits might have your ears more open, "on the alert," so those may be easier for you to learn to follow than working from repertoire in more traditional harmony.


Fantastic post all around, but I'd like to second this remark in particular.

I find that when the ear finds familiar harmony after familiar harmony with few suspensions or passing notes, it becomes harder to track individual lines (which is one reason why much Renaissance polyphony tends to blend together to the untrained/unaccustomed ear). When I listen to something by Stravinsky or Schoenberg on the other hand, the constant shifting of interval relations makes me listen more closely to the individual lines and their interactions. And both of them were excellent at counterpoint (although it came with more effort to Stravinsky than either Bartok or Schoenberg), so it's a worthwhile thing to do.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I made a big breakthrough in listening to Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 1 when I realized that the lines were all written with different rhythmic schemes, and each one just kind of "wanders off" in its own way. But it makes a tension between that, and the harmonies which occur as a result; no doubt Carter knew this. 

Bach knew it, too; much of his polyphonic lines create "chords" which did not really exist in the Baroque, like major sevenths. He even emphasizes such spots rhythmically, to make sure you hear it. I find this is one of the most endearing things about Bach; it's as if he is communicating "inside information" to me only.

Also, there is the "memory" phenomena, which happens in Bach as well, when you "remember" a note which immediately precedes, and it affects the present chord. This is fantastic, isn't it?

Morton Feldman does this a lot; you hear a note in isolation, followed by another note, and it "pulls" your ear to a tonal center; then a third note occurs which changes or contradicts that assumption. This is true artistry!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

In order to hear polyphonically, it helps to be able to read music, and to be able to read scores .
This makes you much mor aware of what is actually going on in any given work which
makes use of polyphony .
So if you can't read an orchestral score , or works such as the Goldberg variations &
the WTC , you won't regret learning to do so in the least bit . There are books on how to read
music, although I can't think of the names offhand at the moment .
Dover publishing has a wide varity of classical scores available at good prices .


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## Feathers (Feb 18, 2013)

I usually hear music (tonal ones, at least) while visualizing a keyboard in my head, where the notes in the melody as well as the basic solid version of each chord "light up", not for the sake of conscious analysis but as a natural reaction (like how some people visualize words/alphabets while listening to a language).

I think I'm actually incapable of listening polyphonically. Sure, I can switch my attention from voice to voice and appreciate the simultaneous melodies, but I can't actually listen to more than one melody (by its general definition) at the same time, even when I'm _playing_ the piece. *Sigh*


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

I don't know if this is helpful...but in the case of works like Symphonies, I tend to listen to lines that each "group" is playing. I listen to what the Violins are playing, what the brass or woodwinds are playing, if the lower stringed instruments are playing different lines, etc. I listen to what phrase each group is playing.

In the case of a Concerto I tend to listen to the orchestra more as a background chord progression and pay more attention to the soloist playing over the top of it.


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Piwikiwi said:


> i advice for me? I'm quite good at hearing different melodies but I often get completely lost when I'm listening to fugues.


Smalin's playlist for contrapuntal music would be a good place to start. Some of the videos, including the first Contrapunctus III, are meant specifically to help follow contrapuntal music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwf8e5jHTg&list=PLCE480D16F5DC6DD1


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

I hear it every which way all at the same time. Horizontal, vertical, rhythm and timbre. It's all one package for me. Whatever the style of music.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I think I listen polyphonically, vertically and I listen to the melodic line, horizontally. But I can't pick out all the chords and all the parts every time, too much work, far too difficult. But perhaps that's part of my training and practise over the past 15 yrs. I've been playing second violin in an orchestra, at the back of the seconds and in the middle of the orchestra. I need to listen for the parts below and above. 

Sometimes, with humour, during rehearsal, our conductor will stop us and ask "who's got the melody here?" Many of us shrug without any idea because we're too busy playing our own instrument. Players need to listen to everyone else, as well as themselves. Sounds easier than it actually is to do.

A good way to practice listening vertically is to go to see a symphony performance, up to 100 instruments making music at the same time. Let your eyes help you listen vertically.


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