Unfolding (music)

In music cognition, the phenomenon is also known as melodic fission.

The term "compound melody" may have its origin in Walter Piston's Counterpoint (New York, Norton, 1947), under the form "compound melodic line" (London edition, 1947, p. 23).

Manfred Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era, New York, Norton, 1947, had spoken of "implied polyphony".

"[1] Though the notes skipped between, those heard, may be considered near the foreground, the dyads, those implied, are in the middle or background.

Middleground dyads are "unfolded" in the foreground: "intervals conceptually heard as sounding together are separated in time, unfolded, as it where, into a melodic sequence.