Figure 5.

Textures of chorusing. The figure presents an overview of the major types of textures (i.e., multi-part performance arrangements) found in chorusing, both animal and human. The figure is organized as a 2 × 2 scheme, where one dimension relates to pitch (whether the melodic lines are the same or not) and the other relates to rhythm (whether the various parts are synchronized in time or not). Each cell indicates a principal type of choral texture. The right-side cells are found in both animals and humans, while the left-side cells are principally found in humans. It is proposed that the initial affective precursor of language and music was heterophonic, while the musilanguage stage was potentially polyphonic as well. The aligned textures of unison and homophony required the emergence of the human capacity for metric entrainment in order to evolve.