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Musical passages exhibit a wide range of textures. These can include monophony, tune-and-accompaniment, homophony, close harmony, polyphony, pseudo-polyphony, heterophony, and a wealth of specially tailored arrangements with various hierarchical structures. Introductory music theory textbooks generally focus on Baroque voice-leading rules to the virtual exclusion of other types of part-writing. Although most music-making bears little resemblance to Baroque-style four-part chorale writing, there are excellent reasons why this particular practice has formed the core theory curriculum for so long. The evidence suggests that late Baroque practice most closely reflects known principles of auditory scene analysis. The perceptual principles underlying voice leading provide an important entry point for understanding any musical texture—no matter what the style, culture, or genre of music-making. Like a theatrical stage, composers set a “musical scene.” Auditory scene analysis is the process by which listeners subjectively apprehend that scene.

Post-Vietnam Hollywood combat filmmakers set aside the most common musical trope of earlier war movies: the military march. Instead, new musical tropes were developed, initially in the 1980s Vietnam cycle. A particularly unstable musical register, here called veil music, uses musical texture rather than melody or meter to expresses a range of equivocal combat states, most related to the foreignness of the battlefield for the American soldiers at the center of these films. In the Vietnam cycle, veil music is connected to moments of moral liminality, when surprising acts of violence might be done. Examples from Platoon and Full Metal Jacket are discussed. Veil music in war films set in the Middle East often characterize the Arab other by way of untranslated singing voices, putting exotic musical tropes to rather generalized uses characterizing the foreign other. Examples from The Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down, and Three Kings are analyzed.

Prokofiev’s early, unpublished works for piano were composed between 1896 and 1907. They demonstrate the origins of his pianistic idiom, as well as provide us with a genealogy of musical ideas and gestures that were to remain key features of his compositional voice. These early works, in addition to evidence drawn from a number of primary sources, also present us with insights into Prokofiev’s own development as a pianist and his musical personality, shedding light on his technical strengths, his preferences, and his at times unorthodox approach to performance. The chapter concludes with a hermeneutic and analytical discussion of his Toccata, op. 11, composed in 1912, the climactic work of this early period.

A broad survey of Britten’s compositional output reveals a predilection toward linkage technique––the carrying over of pitches from the end of one phrase or segment to form the beginning of the next. Whereas linkage can be found in many genres, Britten frequently employs this technique in his operas to depict certain aspects of a character’s thoughts and motivations, either spoken or unspoken, as the drama continues to unfold on stage. Consideration of musical texture reveals three typical uses: (1) accompaniment linkage between the vocal melody and the instrumental accompaniment, (2) interlude linkage between vocal phrases separated by an intervening instrumental interlude, and (3) character linkage between the music sung by different characters in an opera. Consideration of linkage has practical implications for performers, directors, and choreographers, who may use insights gained through score analysis to craft a staged, gestural interpretation at moments of linkage.