The concept of texture in American Music Theory.

Abstract

An important chapter in the development of the concept of texture in the musical thought of the 20th century relates to the characterizations this concept received in the field of American Music Theory. This article reviews some of the theories of texture produced in this field from the '40s onwards. Decades after its first documented usage in musical sense, the publication of an entrance dedicated to the concept of texture in a music dictionary edited by Willi Apel in 1944 represents an institutionalization of the term in the English-speaking musicology. With the constitution in the United States of Music theory as an autonomous field of musical thought, texture will be formalized in an analogous manner as other aspect of' music. Theories of texture, in spite of representing a critical point of view in relation to dominant analytical models. still involve a minor intervention in the field of American musicology.