'Tom Fahy' was an assemblage of musicians headed by multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and County Galway native Tom Fahy, born Quinn McCarthy (1971-19 June 2008). Core members included Jiang Dan, Rachael Eisley, Zhang Li and Liu Kaige, while other players were drafted for the requirements of particular pieces. Their 50+ album catalogue was the fruit of a 9-year collaboration initiated while the core members were in residence in Honolulu, Hawai'i. To each album, the members brought a myriad of musical competencies.
Polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (monody).
Counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm, and interdependent in harmony. It has been most commonly identified in Western music, developing strongly in the Renaissance, and also dominant in much of the common practice period, especially in Baroque music. The term comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum ("point against point").[1]
Dissonant counterpoint was first theorized by Charles Seeger as "at first purely a school-room discipline," consisting of species counterpoint but with all the traditional rules reversed. First species counterpoint is required to be all dissonances, establishing "dissonance, rather than consonance, as the rule," and consonances are "resolved" through a skip, not step. He wrote that "the effect of this discipline" was "one of purification." Other aspects of composition, such as rhythm, could be "dissonated" by applying the same principle.[2]
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