Definition of "antiphony" []

• Responsive or antiphonal singing or chanting. (noun)
• A composition that is sung responsively; an antiphon. (noun)
• A responsive or reciprocal interchange, as of ideas or opinions: "Sheridan's play shows both sides of the coin. He establishes an antiphony of cynicism and sentimentality” ( Jonathan Miller). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The two took up a kind of antiphony, one against the other, now rising in volume, now dying down to a low grumble, again suddenly bursting like an explosion."
• "The cathedral, of course, always adds powerfully to the atmospherics at work - whether wrapping an evocative halo around the divided-chorus antiphony in Elizabeth Poston's "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" during Saturday's opening Advent wreath procession, or providing crisp reverberation to the athletically virtuosic brass-quintet playing from members of the Washington Symphonic Brass."
• "Shelley takes this scene of boundless audition to the Alps, and replays it with a sense of poetry aspiring, not to tame, but to run wild with antiphony and metrical disorder:"