polyphonic, a.
(pɒlɪˈfɒnɪk)
[f. as prec. + -ic.]
1. Mus. a. Composed or arranged for several voices or parts, each having a melody of its own; consisting of a number of melodies combined; contrapuntal; of or pertaining to polyphonic music.
| 1782 Burney Hist. Mus. (1789) II. ii. 88 He asserts that he not only invented polyphonic music, or counterpoint, but the polyplectrum or spinet. 1876 tr. Blaserna's Sound vii. 121 In the tenth and eleventh centuries an attempt was begun..at polyphonic music. 1884 Athenæum 13 Sept. 346/1 The choruses..are marvellous specimens of the composer's polyphonic skill. |
b. Applied to an instrument capable of producing more than one note at a time, as a keyboard instrument, a harp, etc.
| 1890 in Cent. Dict. |
2. a. Producing many sounds; many-voiced. Also fig.
| 1864 Webster, Polyphonic, having, or consisting of, many voices or sounds. 1868 Sat. Rev. 11 Apr. 496/2 The barking crow [of British Columbia] possesses the most remarkable polyphonic powers. It can shriek, laugh, yell, shout, whistle, scream, and bark. 1890 Daily News 28 Mar. 5/4 A grand organ..called a polyphonic organ... The chief characteristic of this organ is the perfect imitation which it can produce of almost the whole orchestra, especially of the strings and the wood wind. 1920 H. Crane Let. 15 Jan. (1965) 31 Your aristocrat is much more vital and admirable than the polyphonic God, chosen to symbolize the artist. |
b. Of prose: written to sound pleasant and melodious.
| 1916 J. G. Fletcher in Poetry Apr. 35 It seems fitting that a new name should be given to these poems of hers [sc. Amy Lowell's], which, printed as prose, or as prose and verse interspersed, display all the colors of the chromatic palette. The title that fits them best is that of Polyphonic Prose. 1917 A. Lowell in N. Amer. Rev. Jan. 115 Metre, cadence, and rhyme are some of the many ‘voices’ employed in ‘polyphonic prose’. Others are assonance, alliteration, and return. 1920 H. Crane Let. 18 Aug. (1965) 41 Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus seems to me all polyphonic prose. 1925 I. A. Richards Princ. Lit. Crit. 135 Even the most highly organised lyrical or ‘polyphonic’ prose raises as it advances only a very ambiguous expectation. 1940 C. Stratton Handbk. Eng. 249/2 Polyphonic prose, prose very carefully written to make the sounds pleasant and harmonious... The sound is obtained by attention to combinations and sequences of letters and syllables. 1977 Amer. N. & Q. XVI. 39/2 It is not improbable that the master of polyphonic prose was conscious of some metempsychosis which had taken place. |
3. Philol. Of a letter or other written character: Having more than one phonetic value (as c, g, s, and the vowels in many European languages).
| 1891 tr. De La Saussaye's Hist. Sc. of Relig. liii. 463 They are often polyphonic, that is the same sign represents various sounds. 1901 Speaker 1 June 244/2 His feeling for the colours of vowels and the polyphonic properties of consonants was impeccable. |
So polyˈphonical a.; also polyˈphonically adv., as regards polyphony, in a polyphonic manner.
| 1864 A. M{supc}Kay Hist. Kilmarnock 259 The greatest success has attended his polyphonical and gastriloquial displays. 1936 Jrnl. Theol. Stud. XXXVII. 168 This is exactly the point needed to explain the presence of a set of polyphonical Sequelae in our MS. 1936 Scrutiny V. 268 The increasing tendency in Beethoven's music to think of harmony..vertically and dramatically instead of horizontally and polyphonically. 1942 Polyphonically [see monophonically adv. a]. 1946 R. Blesh Shining Trumpets (1949) iv. 87 The response lines begin to lose their strictly harmonic division into set chords and separate into independent melodic lines woven together polyphonically. 1959 Listener 8 Jan. 80/1 The polyphonically derived harmony intensifies the seventeenth-century partiality for modal variety and false relation. |