Polyphony since 1950

What is polyphony today? 

This notion is widely used in music, evoking the Franco-Flemish school, the Art of the Fugue, Webern... This cross-disciplinary approach to the history of music would seem to suggest a definition directly linked to counterpoint. 

However, a look at the last sixty years reveals the complexity of this notion, which resonates with today's society, as well as with the immense musical heritage enjoyed by composers. Named heterophony by Luciano Berio and polymusic by Georges Benjamin, micropolyphony by György Ligeti and polyrhythm by Elliott Carter, polyphony now seems a multiple reality. It's a polymorphous object whose understanding sheds new light on contemporary music in all its diversity, and on one of the major concerns of a culture, as Henri Pousseur pointed out in 1972, that is increasingly global in character: heterogeneity. 

Through a network of diverse musical works, as well as the writings of composers from different generations, the author proposes a contemporary definition of polyphony.