The Melodic Factor in Four-Voice Part Writing/Voicing and Connecting Chords

In much music, the number of musical lines, or “voices,” varies. Composers may reinforce a line at the octave, add notes to thicken a chord’s texture, and so on. However, we’ll start with music for four fixed lines, and we’ll focus at first on vocal music for these reasons:

• Voice ranges are narrower and thus more manageable than instrumental ranges.