What is Part (music)?
In [[music]], a '''part''' is a line of music which is played by one player or group of players (or sung by one or more [[singers]]). This is the usual meaning of the word “part” when talking about musical [[composition (music)|composition]]s. When a group of [[musical instrument|instruments]] are all playing the same [[note (music)|notes]] together - like the first [[violin]]s in an [[orchestra]], they are all playing the same part. The second violins are playing another part, the [[viola]]s are playing yet another part, etc. In a [[string quartet]] each of the four instruments plays a different part. A group of singers who are all singing the tune together are singing in ''[[unison]]''. If they divide into [[soprano]], [[alto]], [[tenor]] and [[bass (vocal range)|bass]], they are singing in four parts. The sopranos may be singing the tune and the altos, tenors and basses are providing the [[harmony]] underneath. This is called “4 part harmony”. If each of the four parts has its own share of the [[melody]] (or its own melody) it is [[polyphonic]] music. Polyphonic music is always in several parts. Sometimes music for the [[piano]] or [[Organ (music)|organ]] may be written in a strict number of parts, e.g. a 5 part [[fugue]] for the piano could also be performed on five different instruments because there are always exactly five different lines of music (although sometimes a part will have a rest, but this is always shown by rests in the music). Although written on two [[stave]]s for the pianist (or three staves for an organist) it could be written on five staves: one stave for each part. Another word for a musical ''part'' is ''voice''. In most other European languages the word for ''part'' in this musical sense is the same as the normal word for ''[[voice]]'' e.g. in [[German language|German]]: ''Stimme'' or [[French language|French]] ''voix''. In general, the more parts there are in a musical composition the harder it is to compose because they all have to fit together to sound nice. The [[1