Free Polyphony

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Free Polyphony

 

in music, a polyphonic style characterized by a freedom and variety of melodic construction and the dominance of two harmonies—major and minor.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive ?
Acknowledging the band's reticence to have this song crystalized in a static discourse, Malvinni navigates the reader through the aesthetic aspects of the improvisational sections of "Dark Star." Drawing on Graeme Boone's tonal analysis of the "Dark Star Progression," the author includes a detailed chronology of the evolution of the song and a historiography of the musical source materials the band derived from their interest in Charles Ives's work (free polyphony and unmetered barring) and bass ostinatos from Miles Davis's "So What" (87).
Grateful. Dead and the Art of Rock. Improvisation
Each embodies one of several possible strategies: chant-paraphrase (Alma redemptoris), metricized cantus firmus (Salve), free polyphony (Intemerata).
Johannes Ockeghem, Collected Works, vol. 3, Motets and Chansons

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