ABSTRACT
Some of the exploration of new timbres and textures, especially the former, was partly the result of outside influences—jazz and folk music, Asian and Latin American music. Composers of post-tonal music have required performers to learn many new techniques of producing sound with traditional instruments. Removal of the mouthpiece permits performing on the mouthpiece alone, without the rest of the instrument, or performing only on the rest of the instrument without the mouthpiece. The traditional musical textures still exist, of course, and the vast majority of post-tonal music probably can be analyzed texturally using those categories. A pointillistic texture in music is one that features rests and wide leaps, a technique that isolates the sounds into "points." Traditional textures—monophonic, homophonic, and contrapuntal—continue to be important in post-tonal music. Other aspects of texture include compound textures, pointillism, stratification, and sound-mass. Spectralism is an approach to composition that uses timbre as the central element.
