Accompanying voice
A subordinate voice supporting the main melody.
What it means
An accompanying voice supports the main melody without itself standing in the foreground. It supplies harmony, rhythm and a sonic ground and is thereby distinct from the melody as well as from a counter-voice, which is led as an independent line beside the melody. Typical forms are sustained chords, broken figures such as the Alberti bass, repeated chord strokes and bass figures that supply foundation and motion at once.
Musical use
The opposition of melody and accompaniment has shaped European music since the seventeenth century and displaces the older notion of voices of equal standing, without fully driving it out. In the thoroughbass the accompaniment is not written out but produced from the figured bass; in the piano music of the nineteenth century it is fully notated and often itself artfully worked. The quality of an accompaniment shows itself in the fact that it carries the melody, leaves it room and yet has a life of its own — a task musically more demanding than the name suggests.
Performance practice
Play accompaniment figures evenly and without unwanted accents; every unrest draws attention away from the melody. Keep the loudness deliberately lower than the main voice and check the balance in the room, not at the instrument. Work out the harmonic changes, for they give the melody its sense. Breathe with the melody carrier and follow its shaping of time, instead of imposing your own rubato notions. Practise accompaniment figures separately, so that they run automatically and the attention stays free in the ensemble playing.
Check also whether an accompaniment figure changes its function in the course of the piece: frequently a secondary voice later becomes a leading line, and this place must become audible. Watch the leading of the bass, because it fixes the harmony and thereby supports the melody or calls it into question. In accompanying singing the priority of the text holds: at dense places the accompaniment draws back, in interludes it may come forward. Practise accompaniment figures for evenness even without the main voice.