Ho­moph­ony is analogous to sol­diers marching in step; it has a strong, su­per­fi­cial ef­fect on the outer ear and on the physio­logi­cal as­pects of hear­ing. So much beauty, how­ever, is dis­played in the in­te­grated and har­mo­ni­ous move­ment of even a centipede, com­pared to such an ar­ti­fi­cial, forced march in step!

His­tori­cally, the con­cept of homo­phonic mu­sic arose from the in­abil­ity to think and act from the in­ner­most level of feel­ing in a si­mul­ta­ne­ously dif­fer­en­tiat­ing and in­te­grat­ing man­ner.
In our tech­no­logi­cal age, this con­cept of marching in step cul­mi­nates in rock and pop mu­sic where eve­ry­thing moves in step: the melody, the rhythm, as well as all the ac­com­pa­ni­ment.

In ho­moph­ony the melody is ham­pered so much by the mass of sup­port­ing voices, that no one be­lieves its free­dom – in spite of even the most skilled in­stru­men­tal ma­nipu­la­tions. Thus, in ho­moph­ony, the melody re­sem­bles the gro­tesque Don Qui­xote who, clad in full ar­mour, se­ri­ously fights the wind­mills. Amidst a mass of “sup­port­ing voices” the melody sim­ply can­not un­fold it­self natu­rally and thus can­not de­velop any genu­ine origi­nality.

Ho­moph­ony in the wid­est sense means “the sound­ing march in step,” and it there­fore finds its cli­max in marches, in party dance mu­sic, and in the en­ter­tain­ment mu­sic of the masses, in­clud­ing the rock and beat mu­sic which, strange enough, aims at en­cour­ag­ing eve­ry lis­tener to move, men­tally and physi­cally, to the same fixed pat­tern.

Thus, the men­tal-spiri­tual en­er­gies of the mu­si­cians and of the lis­ten­ers do not flow to the head – as would seem ap­pro­pri­ate – but rather down to in­fe­rior re­gions of physi­ol­ogy, thus let­ting the true hu­man quali­ties lan­guish.

How­ever, ho­moph­ony not only rep­re­sents the marching in step of many peo­ple, but also the mo­noto­nous repe­ti­tion of a sin­gle fixed pat­tern of step.