Musical texture

Musical texture is the way melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic layers combine in a piece of music. It ranges from a single line to multiple interacting parts.

Melody: A sequence of pitches perceived as a coherent musical line. A texture may foreground one melody or distribute melodic material among several parts.
Ostinato: A short musical pattern repeated persistently, often in the same voice or register. A repeating layer can anchor changing melodies and harmonies.
Bach's The Art of Fugue: An unfinished collection of contrapuntal pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, built around a recurring subject. Its fugues demonstrate how independent lines can grow from one theme.
Musical form: The organization of a musical work into sections and the relationships among them. Form concerns large-scale section structure; texture concerns how parts combine.
Harmony: The organization and combination of simultaneous pitches, especially into chords and progressions. Simultaneous pitches shape how layered parts sound together.
Drone (music): A sustained or repeated pitch sounding beneath changing melodic material. A steady pitch forms a continuous layer beneath other parts.
Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli: A six-voice Mass setting by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, published in 1567. Its vocal writing offers a clear example of interwoven choral lines.
Musical timbre: The perceptual quality that distinguishes one sound source from another, apart from pitch and loudness. Timbre distinguishes sound qualities, while texture describes relationships among layers.
Counterpoint: The combination of independent melodic lines into a coherent musical whole. It describes the interaction among distinct lines within a polyphonic texture.
Doubling (music): The performance of the same musical line by multiple instruments or voices, often at different octaves. Doubling thickens a line without creating an independent melody.

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