Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Music Having a single melodic line.
  • adjective Electronics Relating to a system of transmitting, recording, or reproducing sound in which one or more sources are connected to a single channel; monaural.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Same as monodic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Mus.) Single-voiced; having but one part; ; -- opposed to polyphonic.
  • adjective Of or relating to a system for recording and reproducing sound, which has only one sound channel; also called monaural or mono. It contrasts with stereophonic (or stereo), quadraphonic, or surround-sound, which have two or more channels, and can thus reproduce the effect of the sound coming from more than one direction.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of sound reproduction having a single channel; monaural (compare stereophonic)
  • adjective music having a single melodic line and no harmony (compare polyphonic)
  • adjective orthography having simple one-to-one mapping between letters and phonemes

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective designating sound transmission or recording or reproduction over a single channel
  • adjective consisting of a single melodic line

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mono- + -phonic

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Examples

  • It is a sixteenth-century setting for four voices of a monophonic song notated c1100.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

  • The monophonic and polyphonic repertoire of Notre Dame was cultivated in the same as the popular Cantigas de amigo, secular love-songs in Galician-Portuguese, the then poetic language.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Lu 2009

  • Long sections of "The People that Walked in Darkness" aria in Handel's "Messiah" are monophonic the instruments are playing the same line as the voice.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Lu 2009

  • They include works based on plainchant (the Missa ‘Pange lingua’), monophonic songs (the two L'Homme armé masses), or voice parts extracted from polyphonic chansons (Missa ‘Faisant regretz’).

    Archive 2009-05-01 Lu 2009

  • The monophonic chants exhibit considerable variety, both in the alternation of participants – priest, readers, cantor, soloists and choir – and, particularly, in musical, texture: the delivery of text on a single pitch, then more ornamental recitation patterns – formulas specific to the beginning, middle and end of a phrase – and finally actual melodies.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

  • In this varied musical life there appeared, with the cooperation and under the direction of Alfonso, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of more than four hundred monophonic songs.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Lu 2009

  • The book is a fantasy novel and has no christian influence which permeates the monophonic style of music.

    The Music of Thrones 2009

  • This approach may have been the source of several basic qualities of shirei Erez Israel: The songs are suited for community sing-alongs, dictating the need for a simple textual and musical structure, uncomplicated melodies, uniformity of subject matter and ease of performance (chiefly monophonic and unison singing), thereby enabling diverse audiences of varying ages to sing them.

    Hebrew Song, 1880-2000. 2009

  • Secular models include both monophonic songs as in the vast Missa ‘Maria zart’, based on a German devotional song and voice parts extracted from polyphonic chansons.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Lu 2009

  • Further variety is provided by the different possibilities of polyphonic sound, and especially the contrast between monophonic and polyphonic textures within single pieces.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

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