![]() ![]() Ĭhromatic most often refers to structures derived from the twelve-note chromatic scale, which consists of all semitones. In some usages it includes all forms of heptatonic scale that are in common use in Western music (the major, and all forms of the minor). Very often, diatonic refers to musical elements derived from the modes and transpositions of the "white note scale" C–D–E–F–G–A–B. These terms may mean different things in different contexts. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900. , movement I, fugue subject: diatonic variant ĭiatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. Composers of the Second Viennese School - Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern - completely eradicate any diatonic basis with atonal and dodecaphonic (twelve-tone serialism) harmony, and can thus be said to have moved through and beyond chromaticism.Bartók: Music. Wagner and Strauss pushed to the extreme the tension of prolonging chromatic pitches, whereas other composers, such as Debussy, overstep the boundary and moves towards modality. Historically, the prolongations of chromatic pitches, chords, and keys, increasingly undermining a clear diatonic harmonic basis, led it many different directions. ![]() Composers such as Beethoven and to an even greater extent Schubert, are examples of the first composers to explore this. Given that gamut of keys for most music of the eighteenth century is diatonic - most often creating a tension between tonic and dominant (Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, 1978) - the use of chromatic keys opens up a vista of new tonal possibilities. Most obviously the level of diatonicism, or its displacement around the cycle of fifths, of a chromatic chord makes it sound more or less nearly-related to the tonic (that is within diatonicism, although other theories exist, notably certain neo-Riemannian theories).įinally, keys, which may provide large-scale harmonic structure in nineteenth-century music, may also be chromatic. The way these chords are used in nineteenth-century music is not arbitrary and each chord has its own specific quality and compositional implications. In C major, chromatic chords include all those outside the diatonic framework, including C minor, C-sharp major and minor, D major, E-flat major and minor, E major, F minor, F-sharp major and minor, G minor, A-flat major and minor, A major, B-flat major and minor, and B major and minor. In nineteenth-century music there can be no pitches without chords, which more fully suggest harmony. Hence, chromatically introduced A# usually goes to B while Eb would have to go to D. As a general rule, chromatically raised tones resolve upward while chromatically lowered ones resolve downward. For a chromatic pitch to function 'chromatically', however, it must resolve in a logical way to a diatonic pitch, otherwise the overload of 'colour' undermines the integrity of the key and begins to suggest a modulation to a different key or a non-diatonic modality. For example, in C major, C-sharp, D-flat, D-sharp, E-flat, F-sharp, G-flat, G-sharp, A-flat, A-sharp and B-flat all represent chromatic pitches. The etymology of the word chromatic, which refers to colour, gives us a clue as to its function is in nineteenth-century music: it provides inflections to diatonic harmonies.Ī chromatic pitch is any note not contained within a given diatonic collection. Chromaticism refers to the use of pitches, chords, and keys not associated with diatonic collections. ![]()
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