Quartal and quintal harmony
Encyclopedia
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
structures with a distinct preference for the intervals
Interval (music)
In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...
of the perfect fourth
Perfect fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...
, the augmented fourth
Tritone
In classical music from Western culture, the tritone |tone]]) is traditionally defined as a musical interval composed of three whole tones. In a chromatic scale, each whole tone can be further divided into two semitones...
and the diminished fourth
Diminished fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a diminished fourth is an interval produced by narrowing a perfect fourth by a chromatic semitone. For example, the interval from C to F is a perfect fourth, five semitones wide, and both the intervals from C to F, and from C to F are diminished fourths,...
. Quintal harmony is harmonic
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
structure preferring the perfect fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
, the augmented fifth
Augmented fifth
In classical music from Western culture, an augmented fifth is an interval produced by widening a perfect fifth by a chromatic semitone. For instance, the interval from C to G is a perfect fifth, seven semitones wide, and both the intervals from C to G, and from C to G are augmented fifths,...
and the diminished fifth
Tritone
In classical music from Western culture, the tritone |tone]]) is traditionally defined as a musical interval composed of three whole tones. In a chromatic scale, each whole tone can be further divided into two semitones...
. In modern tuning, the augmented fourth and the diminished fifth are identical and are often called the tritone because the interval between the two notes is three tone
Major second
In Western music theory, a major second is a musical interval spanning two semitones, and encompassing two adjacent staff positions . For example, the interval from C to D is a major second, as the note D lies two semitones above C, and the two notes are notated on adjacent staff postions...
s.
Use of the terms quartal and quintal arises from a contrast, compositional or perceptual, with traditional tertian
Tertian
In music theory, tertian describes any piece, chord, counterpoint etc. constructed from the interval of a third...
harmonic constructions. Listeners familiar with music during and after the Common practice period
Common practice period
The common practice period, in the history of Western art music , spanning the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, lasted from c. 1600 to c. 1900.-General characteristics:...
perceive tonal
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
music as that which uses major
Major scale
In music theory, the major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher. In solfege these notes correspond to the syllables "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti/Si, ", the "Do" in the parenthesis at...
and minor
Minor scale
A minor scale in Western music theory includes any scale that contains, in its tonic triad, at least three essential scale degrees: 1) the tonic , 2) a minor-third, or an interval of a minor third above the tonic, and 3) a perfect-fifth, or an interval of a perfect fifth above the tonic, altogether...
chords
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
and scales
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
, wherein both the major third
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
and minor third
Minor third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the minor third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. The minor quality specification identifies it as being the smallest of the two: the minor third spans three semitones, the major...
constitute the basic structural elements of the harmony.
Quintal harmony (the harmonic layering of fifths specifically) is a lesser-used term, and since the fifth is the inversion
Inversion (music)
In music theory, the word inversion has several meanings. There are inverted chords, inverted melodies, inverted intervals, and inverted voices...
or complement
Complement (music)
In music the term complement refers to two distinct concepts.In traditional music theory a complement is the interval which, when added to the original interval, spans an octave in total. For example, a major 3rd is the complement of a minor 6th. The complement of any interval is also known as its...
of the fourth, it is usually considered indistinct from quartal harmony. Indeed, a circle of fifths
Circle of fifths
In music theory, the circle of fifths shows the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys...
can be arranged in fourths (G -> C -> F -> B etc. are fifths when played downwards and fourths when played upwards); this is the reason that modern theoreticians may speak of a "circle of fourths".
Definition
The concept of quartal harmony outlines a formal harmonic structure based on the use of the interval of a perfect fourthPerfect fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...
to form chords
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
. The fourth, thus, substitutes for the third as used in chords based on major
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
and minor third
Minor third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the minor third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. The minor quality specification identifies it as being the smallest of the two: the minor third spans three semitones, the major...
s. Although the fourth replaces the third in chords, quartal harmony rarely replaces tertian harmony in full works. Instead, the two types of harmony are found side-by-side. Since the distance between the lower and the higher notes of a stack of two perfect fourths is a minor seventh
Minor seventh
In classical music from Western culture, a seventh is a musical interval encompassing seven staff positions , and the minor seventh is one of two commonly occurring sevenths. The minor quality specification identifies it as being the smallest of the two: the minor seventh spans ten semitones, the...
and this interval inverts to a major second
Major second
In Western music theory, a major second is a musical interval spanning two semitones, and encompassing two adjacent staff positions . For example, the interval from C to D is a major second, as the note D lies two semitones above C, and the two notes are notated on adjacent staff postions...
, quartal harmony necessarily also includes these intervals. Whether one hears these chords and intervals as consonant or dissonant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
is a matter of personal interpretation.
Analytical difficulties
There is a question whether a chord built from fourths should be interpreted as a quartal-harmony structure, or if it is more meaningful to interpret is as part of the traditional functional harmony.
Dominant seventh chord
In music theory, a dominant seventh chord, or major minor seventh chord,is a chord composed of a root, major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. It can be also viewed as a major triad with an additional minor seventh...
(with an omitted fifth) in the midst of a 4-3 suspension, or as C7sus4 (see suspended chord
Suspended chord
A suspended chord is a chord in which the third is omitted, replaced usually with either a perfect fourth or a major second , although the fourth is far more common...
), where the fourth does not require resolution. Fsus4, a suspended second inversion
Inversion (music)
In music theory, the word inversion has several meanings. There are inverted chords, inverted melodies, inverted intervals, and inverted voices...
chord, would also be a plausible label. Extending quartal chords to four or more notes generate still more possibilities of a similar nature. The four-note chord C - F - B - E can be interpreted as a C minor chord with a minor seventh and embellishing fourth (Cm7add4 or Cm11), or as an inversion of an E-flat major chord with a second-suspension and embellishing sixth—Esus2(add6), among other interpretations.
The question of which strategy of analysis is advisable is hard to answer since it is refined by the particular details: given one interpretation, and the progression of harmony through the preceding and following chords, and the overall musical development, is there a comprehensible and audibly functional meaning to the interpretation? It is important to question whether these suspensions, chromatic chord
Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
s and altered chord
Altered chord
In music, an altered chord, an example of alteration, is a chord with one or more diatonic notes replaced by, or altered to, a neighboring pitch in the chromatic scale...
s are resolved as part of the functional harmony or whether they remain non-functional and unresolved.
History
In the Middle AgesMedieval music
Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
, simultaneous notes a fourth apart were heard as a consonance
Consonance
Consonance is a stylistic device, most commonly used in poetry and songs, characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy".Consonance should not be confused with assonance, which is the...
. During the Common practice period
Common practice period
The common practice period, in the history of Western art music , spanning the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, lasted from c. 1600 to c. 1900.-General characteristics:...
(between about 1600 and 1900), this interval came to be heard either as a dissonance (when appearing as a suspension requiring resolution in the voice leading
Voice leading
In musical composition, voice leading is the term used to refer to a decision-making consideration when arranging voices , namely, how each voice should move in advancing from each chord to the next.- Details :...
) or as a consonance (when the tonic of the chord appears in parts higher than the fifth of the chord). In the later 19th century, during the breakdown of tonality in Classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, all intervallic relationships were once again reassessed. Quartal harmony was developed in the early 20th century as a result of this breakdown and reevaluation of tonality. Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
of the 1960s frequently used quartal harmony.
Precursors
The Romantic composers Frédéric ChopinFrédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
used the special "thinned out" sound of fourth-chords in late works for piano (Nuages gris
Nuages Gris
Nuages gris , S.199 or Trübe Wolken, is a work for piano solo composed by Franz Liszt on August 24, 1881. It is one of Liszt's most haunting and at the same time one of his most experimental works, representing, according to Allen Forte, "a high point in the experimental idiom with respect to...
, La lugubre gondola, and other works).
Tristan chord
The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D and G. More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same intervals: augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented ninth above a root...
is made up of the notes F, B, D and G and is the very first chord heard in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
. The bottom two notes make up an augmented fourth the upper two make up a perfect fourth. This layering of fourths in this context has been seen as highly significant. The chord had been found in earlier works (notably Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18
Piano Sonata No. 18 (Beethoven)
The Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3, is a sonata for solo piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, the third and last of his Op. 31 piano sonatas. The work dates from 1802...
) but Wagner's usage was significant, first because it is seen as moving away from traditional tonal harmony and even towards atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
, and second because with this chord Wagner actually provoked the sound or structure of musical harmony to become more predominant than its function, a notion which was soon after to be explored by Debussy and others. Beethoven's usage of the chord is of short duration and it resolves in the accepted manner; whereas Wagner's usage lasts much longer and resolves in a highly unorthodox manner for the time. Despite the layering of fourths, it is rare to find musicologists identifying this chord as "quartal harmony" or even as "proto-quartal harmony", since Wagner's musical language is still essentially built on thirds, and even an ordinary dominant seventh chord can be laid out as augmented fourth plus perfect fourth (F-B-D-G). Wagner's unusual chord is really a device to draw the listener in to the musical-dramatic argument that the composer in presenting us with. However, fourths become important later in the opera, especially in the melodic development.
From 1850 to 1900, the application of tonality began to dissolve as evidenced in the works of composers of the Late Romantic such as Wagner, Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
, Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
and Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, and as the 20th century began with tonality no longer a strong binding force, quartal harmony became one of the new means of expression. At the beginning of the 20th century, fourth-based chords finally became an important element of harmony.
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
used a self-developed system of transposition using fourth-chords, like his Mystic chord in his Sixth Piano Sonata
Sonata No. 6 (Scriabin)
The Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 62, by Alexander Scriabin, was composed in 1911. Although it was named the sixth sonata, the piece was preceded by the Sonata No. 7. As it is one of the late piano sonatas of Scriabin's career, the music consists of a single movement, and is highly atonal...
. Earlier sketches of his symphonic composition, Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, indicate that he first intended that the work develop from a single non-transposed tonal centre. Scriabin wrote this chord in his sketches alongside other quartal passages and more traditional tertian passages, often passing between systems, for example widening the six-note quartal sonority (C - F - B - E - A - D) into a seven-note chord (C - F - B - E - A - D - G).
In 1912, Leonid Sabaneyev
Leonid Sabaneyev
Leonid Leonidovich Sabaneyev or Sabaneyeff or Sabaneev was a Russian musicologist, music critic, composer and scientist.-Biography:...
published a work on Scriabin's theoretical ideas about Prometheus: The Poem of Fire in the periodical Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and...
, but his opinions may not have been appropriate. As Hugo Riemann
Hugo Riemann
Karl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann was a German music theorist.-Biography:Riemann was born at Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. He was educated in theory by Frankenberger, studied the piano with Barthel and Ratzenberger, studied law, and finally philosophy and history at Berlin and Tübingen...
wrote in his Music Lexicon: "Firstly, chords from pure fourths (for example those in Arnold Schoenberg's well cited Chamber Symphony) without extension or mixture are used in the same way as diminished fourths, and secondly, that Scriabin himself looked upon his so-called Mystic Chord not as a quartal structure but as a reflection of the overtone series." Scriabin's sketches for his unfinished work Mysterium show that he intended to develop the Mystic chord into a huge chord incorporating all twelve notes of the chromatic scale
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
.
Fourth-based harmony became important in the work of Slavic and Scandinavian composers such as Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
, Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
, and Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
. These composers used this harmony in a pungent, uncovered, almost archaic way, often incorporating the folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
of their particular homelands. Sibelius' Piano Sonata in F-Major, op. 12 of 1893 used tremolo
Tremolo
Tremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
passages of near-quartal harmony in a way that was relatively hard and modern. Even in the example below from Mussorgsky's piano-cycle Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists...
, the fourth always makes an "unvarnished" entrance. Rudiments of quartal harmony appear in Janáček's rhapsody
Rhapsody (music)
A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations...
Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba (rhapsody)
Taras Bulba is a rhapsody for orchestra by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. It was composed in 1918 and belongs to the most powerful of Janáček's scores. It is based on the novel by Gogol....
, and his operas The Makropulos Affair and From the House of the Dead
From the House of the Dead
From the House of the Dead is an opera by Leoš Janáček, in three acts. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the novel by Dostoyevsky...
. Descending fourths and sevenths can be found dominating the writing.
Impressionist music
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...
would make much more use of chords built from fourths, even allowing them as a places of relaxation, altering our perception of them in the context of harmonic function and winning them their status as autonomous chords. Fourth-chords became consolidated with ninth chord
Ninth chord
A ninth chord is a chord that encompasses the interval of a ninth when arranged in close position with the root in the bass.A dominant ninth is a dominant chord with a ninth. A ninth chord, as an extended chord, typically includes the seventh along with the basic triad structure. Thus, a Cmaj9...
s, the whole tone scale
Whole tone scale
In music, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales:...
, the pentatonic scale
Pentatonic scale
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...
, and polytonality
Polytonality
The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
as part of the language of Impressionism, and quartal harmony became an important means of expression in music by Debussy, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, and others. Examples are found in Debussy's orchestral work La Mer
La Mer (Debussy)
La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre , or simply La mer , is an orchestral composition by the French composer Claude Debussy. It was started in 1903 in France and completed in 1905 on the English Channel coast in Eastbourne...
and in his piano works, in particular La cathédrale engloutie from his Préludes
Preludes (Debussy)
Claude Debussy's Préludes are two sets of pieces for solo piano. They are divided into two separate livres, or books, of twelve preludes each. Unlike previous collections of preludes, like those of JS Bach and Chopin, Debussy's do not follow a strict pattern of key signatures.Each book was written...
for piano, Pour les quartes and Pour les arpéges composées from his Etudes
Études (Debussy)
Claude Debussy's Études are a set of 12 piano etudes composed in 1915. The pieces are extremely difficult to play, as Debussy himself admitted, describing them as "a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands"...
. Also of note is the opening of Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé
Daphnis et Chloé
Daphnis et Chloé is a ballet with music by Maurice Ravel. Ravel described it as a "symphonie choréographique" . The scenario was adapted by Michel Fokine from an eponymous romance by the Greek writer Longus thought to date from around the 2nd century AD...
: a pile of fifths is generated in the orchestra above which is added a pair of fourth chords.
In the 1897 work Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...
's The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the English name of a poem by Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling, written in 1797. The poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas.-Story:...
, we hear a rising repetition in fourths, as the tireless work of out-of-control walking brooms causes the water level in the house to "rise and rise". Quartal harmony in Ravel's Sonatine
Sonatine (Ravel)
Sonatine is a piano work written by Maurice Ravel. Although Ravel wrote in his autobiography that he wrote the Sonatine after Miroirs, it seems to have been written between 1903 and 1905...
and Ma Mère l'Oye
Ma Mère l'Oye
Ma mère l'oye is a musical work by French composer Maurice Ravel.-Piano versions:Ravel originally wrote Ma mère l'oye as a piano duet for the Godebski children, Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children...
would follow a few years later.
The use of fourth-chords is also found in the works of Mahler. His Seventh Symphony
Symphony No. 7 (Mahler)
Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony was written in 1904-05, with repeated revisions to the scoring. It is sometimes referred to by the title Song of the Night , though this title was not Mahler's own and he disapproved of it. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of 'E minor,'...
, in particular, uses harmony based on fourths alongside those based on thirds.
Modernism and Postmodernism
Composers who use the techniques of quartal harmony include Claude DebussyClaude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
, Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
, Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
. Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
's Chamber Symphony Op. 9
Chamber Symphony No. 1
The Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 9 is a composition by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was finished in 1906 and premiered on February 8, 1907 in Vienna by the Quatuor Rose together with a wind ensemble from the Vienna Philharmonic...
(1906) displays quartal harmony. The work begins not from tonal harmony, but instead begins with a fictitious tonal-centre: the first measures construct a five-part fourth chord with the notes C - F - B - E - A distributed over several instruments. The composer then picks out this vertical quartal harmony in a horizontal sequence of fourths from the horns, eventually leading to a passage of triadic quartal harmony (i.e., chords of three notes, each layer a fourth apart).
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Schoenberg was also one of the first to write on the theoretical consequences of this harmonic innovation. In his Theory of Harmony (Harmonielehre) of 1912, he wrote: "The quartal construction of chords can lead to a chord containing all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, and with that comes a possibility for the systematic use of those harmonic phenomena that have already been obtained in some recent works having seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve-part chords. (...) The quartal construction allows (...) the accommodation of all possible phenomena of harmony (...)." Other examples of quartal harmony appear in Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1
String quartets (Schoenberg)
The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg published four string quartets, distributed over his lifetime. These were the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7 , String Quartet No. 2 in F sharp minor, Op. 10 , String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 , and the String Quartet No. 4, Op...
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For Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
, the importance of quartal harmony lay in the possibility of building new sounds. In 1912, he wrote, "With alteration the fourth-chord never need belong to tonal harmony, but can be free of all tonal relationships." After hearing Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Webern wrote "You must write something like that, too!" (Page 48 of his book The Path to the New Music) Shortly after, he wrote his Four Pieces for Violin and Piano Op. 7, using quartal harmony as a formal principle, which was also used in later works.
Uninfluenced by the theoretical and practical work of the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
, the American Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
meanwhile wrote in 1906 a song called "The Cage" (No. 64 of his collection, 114 songs), in which the piano part contained four-part fourth chords accompanying a vocal line which moves in whole tones.
Other 20th century composers, like Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
with his piano work Mikrokosmos and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114 is one of the best-known compositions by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the score is dated September 7, 1936...
, as well as Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, employed quartal harmony in their work. These composers joined Romantic elements with Baroque music, folk songs and their peculiar rhythm and harmony with the open harmony of fourths and fifths.
Combination tone
A combination tone, also called a sum tone or a difference tone , can be any of at least three similar psychoacoustic phenomena. When two tones are played simultaneously, a listener can sometimes perceive an additional tone whose frequency is a sum or difference of the two frequencies...
s."
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In his Theory of Harmony, Schoenberg remarked on page 407: "Besides myself my students Dr. Anton Webern and Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
have written these harmonies (fourth chords), but also the Hungarian Béla Bartók or the Viennese Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...
, who both go a similar way to Debussy, Dukas and perhaps also Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, are not far off.
British composer Sir Michael Tippett
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...
also employed quartal harmonies extensively in works from his middle period. Examples are his Piano Concerto and the opera The Midsummer Marriage. An almost constant quartal harmony is used by Bertold Hummel
Bertold Hummel
Bertold Hummel was a German composer of modern classical music.- Life :Bertold Hummel was born November 27, 1925 in Hüfingen . He studied at the Academy of Music in Freiburg from 1947 to 1954, taking composition with Harald Genzmer, and cello with Atis Teichmanis...
in his Second Symphony of 1966. A similarly obvious example is the work of Mieczysław Weinberg. Hermann Schroeder
Hermann Schroeder
Hermann Schroeder was a German composer and a Catholic church musician.He spent the greatest part of his life’s work in the Rheinland...
alternated in his works using fragments of Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
between quintal and quartal harmony. Also the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski devised a usage that allows many harmonic combinations to be applied to a single part, having several combinations that may be tried against it, like fourths with whole tones, tritones with semitones, or other possibilities.
In the first movement of Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
's Turangalîla-Symphonie
Turangalîla-Symphonie
The Turangalîla-Symphonie is a large-scale piece of orchestral music by Olivier Messiaen. It was written from 1946 to 1948, on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The premiere was given by that orchestra on December 2, 1949, conducted by Leonard Bernstein in Boston...
, a six-note combination is constructed in pieces from fourths and tritones, much like in the music of Schoenberg and Scriabin. Much of Messiaen's work applies quartal harmony, moderated by his development of what he called "Modes of limited transposition
Modes of limited transposition
Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups...
".
A preference for quartal harmony is present in the works of Leo Brouwer
Leo Brouwer
Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida is a Cuban composer, conductor and guitarist. He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona Casado.-Biography:...
(10 Etude
Étude
An étude , is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano...
s for Guitar), Robert Delanoff (Zwiegespräche für Orgel), Ivan Vïshnegradsky
Ivan Vïshnegradsky
Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky , also transliterated as Vïshnegradsky, Wyshnegradsky, Wischnegradsky, Vishnegradsky, or Wishnegradsky was a Russian composer primarily known for his microtonal compositions, including the quarter tone scale, though he used scales of up to...
, Tōru Takemitsu
Toru Takemitsu
was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre...
(Cross Hatch) and Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
(Hollywood-Elegy). In the 1960s, the use of tone cluster
Tone cluster
A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three consecutive tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale, and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster...
s juxtaposing minor and major seconds pushed aside quartal harmony somewhat. The orchestral work of György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
, Atmosphères
Atmosphères
Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures...
of 1961, makes extensive use of such sounds.
As a transition to the history of jazz, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
may be mentioned. In the first movement of his Concerto in F
Concerto in F (Gershwin)
Concerto in F is a composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and orchestra which is closer in form to a traditional concerto than the earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue...
altered fourth chords descend chromatically in the right hand with a chromatic scale leading upward in the left hand.
Jazz
The style of jazz, having an eclecticEclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
harmonic orbit, was in its early days overtaken (until perhaps the Swing
Swing (genre)
Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...
of the 1930s) by the vocabulary of 19th century European music. Important influences come thereby from opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
, military band
Military band
A military band originally was a group of personnel that performs musical duties for military functions, usually for the armed forces. A typical military band consists mostly of wind and percussion instruments. The conductor of a band commonly bears the title of Bandmaster or Director of Music...
s as well as from the piano music of Classical and Romantic composers, and even that of the Impressionists. Jazz musicians had a clear interest in harmonic richness of colour, for which quartal harmony provided possibilities, as used by pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
s and arranger
Arranger
In investment banking, an arranger is a provider of funds in the syndication of a debt. They are entitled to syndicate the loan or bond issue, and may be referred to as the "lead underwriter". This is because this entity bears the risk of being able to sell the underlying securities/debt or the...
s like Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
, Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
, Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...
, Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...
, Milt Buckner
Milt Buckner
Milt Buckner was an American jazz pianist and organist, originally from St. Louis, Missouri. He was orphaned as a child, but an uncle in Detroit taught him to play...
, Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
, Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
, and especially McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...
. Nevertheless, the older jazz usually handled fourths in the customary manner (as a suspension needing resolution).
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
brought an aesthetic change to modern jazz: the chords which before had a relative identity (as major and minor
Major and minor
In Western music, the adjectives major and minor can describe a musical composition, movement, section, scale, key, chord, or interval.Major and minor are frequently referred to in the titles of classical compositions, especially in reference to the key of a piece.-Intervals and chords:With regard...
, dominant
Dominant (music)
In music, the dominant is the fifth scale degree of the diatonic scale, called "dominant" because it is next in importance to the tonic,and a dominant chord is any chord built upon that pitch, using the notes of the same diatonic scale...
, etc.) gave way to block transpositions, with a fleeting, smooth flowing tonality, having the colours of chords blurred and strongly ambiguous. A prevalent example for this is the beloved ii-V-I
II-V-I
The ii-V-I turnaround, ii-V-I progression, or ii V I even ii V VIII, also known as the dominant cadence, is a common cadential chord progression used in a wide variety of music genres, especially jazz harmony...
cadence of modern jazz.
In the figure to the right, the musician plays the same outer voices as in a traditional cadence, but substitutions have been made in the inner voices. These altered voices still exhibit normal voice leading
Voice leading
In musical composition, voice leading is the term used to refer to a decision-making consideration when arranging voices , namely, how each voice should move in advancing from each chord to the next.- Details :...
but within the extended harmony of jazz
Jazz harmony
Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of how chords are used in jazz music. Jazz bears certain similarities to other practices in the tradition of Western harmony, such as many chord progressions, and the incorporation of the major and minor scales as a basis for chordal construction, but...
. The multiplicity of possibilities available can be used as a framework for improvisation. In addition, compositions of this time often had a frantic tempo, allowing more leeway in the harmony of fleeting chords (because they are not sounding for very long). Quartal harmony was employed throughout the jazz of the 1940s.
Hard bop
Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano...
of the 1950s made new applications of quartal harmony accessible to jazz. Quintet
Quintet
A quintet is a group containing five members.It is commonly associated with musical groups, such as a string quintet, or a group of five singers, but can be applied to any situation where five similar or related objects are considered a single unit....
writing in which two brass instruments (commonly trumpet and saxophone) may proceed in fourths, while the piano (as a uniquely harmonic instrument) lays down chords, but sparsely, only hinting at the intended harmony. This style of writing, in contrast with that of the previous decade, preferred a moderate tempo. Thin-sounding unison bebop horn sections occur frequently, but these are balanced by bouts of very refined polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
such as is found in cool jazz
Cool jazz
Cool is a style of modern jazz music that arose following the Second World War. It is characterized by its relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the bebop style that preceded it...
.
On his watershed record Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released August 17, 1959, on Columbia Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959...
, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
with his sextet applied a self-standing, free fourth chord for the composition "So What
So What (composition)
"So What" is the first track on the 1959 Miles Davis album Kind of Blue.-History:"So What" is one of the best known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D Dorian, followed by eight bars of E Dorian and another eight of D Dorian...
". This particular voicing is sometimes referred to as a So What chord
So What chord
In jazz and jazz harmony, a So What chord is a particular 5-note chord voicing such as employed by Bill Evans in the "'amen' response figure" to the head of the tune "So What"....
.
From the outset of the 1960s, the employment of quartal possibilities had become so familiar that the musician now felt the fourth chord existed as a separate entity, self standing and free of any need to resolve. The pioneering of quartal writing in later jazz and rock, like the pianist McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet and a long solo career.-Early life:...
's work with saxophonist John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
's "classic quartet", was influential throughout this epoch. Oliver Nelson
Oliver Nelson
Oliver Edward Nelson was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger and composer.-Early life and career:...
was also known for his use of fourth chord voicings
Voicing (music)
In music composition and arranging, a voicing is the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the pitches in a chord...
. Floyd claims that the "foundation of 'modern quartal harmony'" begin in the era when the Charlie Parker influenced John Coltrane added classically trained pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner to his ensemble.
Jazz guitarists cited as using chord voicings using quartal harmony include Johnny Smith
Johnny Smith
Johnny Smith is an American cool jazz and mainstream jazz guitarist.-Early years:...
, Tal Farlow
Tal Farlow
Talmage Holt Farlow was an American jazz guitarist. Nicknamed the "Octopus", Farlow's extremely large hands spread over the fretboard as if they were tentacles. He is considered one of the all-time great jazz guitarists. Michael G...
, Chuck Wayne
Chuck Wayne
Chuck Wayne was a jazz guitarist who came to prominence in the 1940s. He is best known for his work with Woody Herman's First Herd, and for being the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet...
, Barney Kessel
Barney Kessel
Barney Kessel was an American jazz guitarist born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. Generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century, he was noted in particular for his vast knowledge of chords and inversions and chord-based melodies...
, Joe Pass
Joe Pass
Joe Pass was an Italian-American jazz guitarist of Sicilian descent. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest jazz guitarists of the 20th century...
, Jimmy Raney
Jimmy Raney
Jimmy Raney was an American jazz guitarist born in Louisville, Kentucky most notable for his work from 1951–1952 and 1962–1963 with Stan Getz and for his work from 1953–1954 with the Red Norvo trio, replacing Tal Farlow. In 1954 and 1955 he won the Down Beat critics poll for guitar...
, Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Russell Malone, Emily...
, however all in a traditional manner, as major 9th, 13th and minor 11th chords (an octave and fourth equals an 11th). Jazz guitarists cited as using modern quartal harmony include Jim Hall
Jim Hall (musician)
James Stanley Hall is an American jazz guitarist.-Biography:Educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s...
(especially Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...
's The Bridge
The Bridge (Sonny Rollins album)
The Bridge, 1962, was the first release of Jazz giant Sonny Rollins following his unexpected early retirement in 1959. The saxophonist was joined for the first time with the musicians with which he would record for the next segment of his career, featuring Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on bass...
), George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....
("Skydive"), Pat Martino
Pat Martino
Pat Martino is an Italian-American jazz guitarist and composer within the post bop, fusion, mainstream jazz, soul jazz and hard bop idioms.-Biography:...
, Jack Wilkins
Jack Wilkins
Jack Wilkins is a guitarist born on June 3, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York. He has played with many jazz greats including Stanley Turrentine, Jimmy Heath, Epitaph , and bassist Eddie Gomez, as well as with singers Mel Tormé, Ray Charles, Morgana King, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, The Manhattan...
("Windows"), Joe Diorio
Joe Diorio
Joseph Louis Diorio is an American jazz guitarist. He has performed with legends of jazz like Sonny Stitt, Eddie Harris, Ira Sullivan, Stan Getz, Pat Metheny, Horace Silver, and Freddie Hubbard...
, Howard Roberts
Howard Roberts
Howard Roberts was an American jazz guitarist, educator and session musician.-Biography:Roberts was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and began playing guitar at age 8. By the time he was 15 he was playing professionally locally....
("Impressions"), Kenny Burrell
Kenny Burrell
Kenneth Earl "Kenny" Burrell is an American jazz guitarist. His playing is grounded in bebop and blues; he has performed and recorded with a wide range of jazz musicians.-Biography:...
("So What"), Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery
John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including Pat Martino, George Benson, Russell Malone, Emily...
("Little Sunflower"), Henry Johnson
Henry Johnson (guitarist)
Henry Johnson is an American jazz guitarist.He began playing guitar at age twelve. While spending some formative time in Memphis, he started playing gospel music at age thirteen. By age fourteen, Johnson was playing in R&B groups...
, Russell Malone
Russell Malone
Russell Malone is an essentially self-taught swing and bebop jazz guitarist. He began working with Jimmy Smith in 1988, and went on to work with Harry Connick, Jr. and Diana Krall throughout the 1990s...
, Jimmy Bruno
Jimmy Bruno
-Biography:Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bruno started playing at the age of 7. He began his professional career at the age of 19, touring with Buddy Rich. Among his many credits, he is the only guitarist to have ever led Frank Sinatra's band...
, Howard Alden
Howard Alden
Howard Alden is an American jazz guitarist born in Newport Beach, California. He has recorded a long series of albums for Concord Records. His performances were dubbed over Sean Penn as 'Emmet Ray' in the 1999 Woody Allen film Sweet and Lowdown...
, Paul Bollenback
Paul Bollenback
Paul Bollenback is a jazz guitarist who has appeared on Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Joan Rivers, and Good Morning America, and has performed with musicians including Charlie Byrd, Arturo Sandoval, Herb Ellis, Stanley Turrentine, Spyro Gyra's Scott Ambush, and Della Reese...
, Mark Whitfield
Mark Whitfield
Mark Whitfield is an American hard bop and soul-jazz guitarist born in Syosset, New York, probably better known for his recordings as bandleader for both the Verve and Warner Bros. Records record labels...
, and Rodney Jones
Rodney Jones (guitarist)
Rodney Jones is a jazz guitarist who worked with Jaki Byard, Chico Hamilton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lena Horne, as well as as a bandleader. He is cited as a jazz guitarist who uses modern quartal harmony.-Sources:...
.
Quartal harmony was also explored as a possibility under new experimental scale models as they were "discovered" by jazz. Musicians began to work extensively with the so-called church modes of old European music, and they became firmly situated in their compositional process. Jazz was well-suited to incorporate the medieval usage of fourths to thicken lines into its improvisation. The pianists Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
, and Chick Corea
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...
are two musicians well-known for their modal experimentation. Around this time, a style known as free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
also came into being, in which quartal harmony had extensive usage due to the wandering nature of its harmony.
Voicing (music)
In music composition and arranging, a voicing is the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the pitches in a chord...
, and specifically quartal harmony was referred to as fourth voicing.
Thus when the m11 and the dominant 7th sus (9sus above) chords in quartal voicings are used together they tend to "blend into one overall sound" sometimes referred to as modal voicings, and both may be applied where the m11 chord is called for during extended periods such as the entire chorus.
Rock music
Quartal harmony is part of the compositional framework of rock music, especially in riffRIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
s and power chord
Power chord
In music, a power chord is a chord consisting of only the root note of the chord and the fifth interval, usually played on electric guitar, and typically through an amplification process that imparts distortion...
s, which often use fifths and fourths instead of triadic harmony. In hard rock and heavy metal, whole songs were often built up from riffs of fourths and fifths on the electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
.
In funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, there is a stylistic device of interjecting fourths in syncopation
Syncopation
In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...
by the guitars, keyboards, or brass section
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
, as with the riff in the song "Flash Light" by George Clinton
George Clinton (funk musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
's band Parliament
Parliament (band)
Parliament was a funk band most prominent during the 1970s. It and its sister act Funkadelic, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
, 1977.
The song "Man on the Silver Mountain" recorded in 1975 by the band Rainbow
Rainbow (band)
Rainbow were an English rock band, controlled by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore from 1975 to 1984 and 1994 to 1997. It was originally established with American rock band Elf's members, though over the years Rainbow went through many line-up changes with no two studio albums featuring the same line-up...
includes a riff completely composed of fourths.
Progressive rock bands like King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
, Gentle Giant
Gentle Giant
Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band was known for the complexity and sophistication of its music and for the varied musical skills of its members. All of the band members, except the first two drummers, were multi-instrumentalists...
or Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
show likewise a fondness for melody and harmony combined into a single structure, the ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
, often in fourths. Tarkus
Tarkus
Tarkus is the second album by the British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1971.In 1993 the album was digitally remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio...
by Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, also known as ELP, are an English progressive rock supergroup. They found success in the 1970s and sold over forty million albums and headlined large stadium concerts. The band consists of Keith Emerson , Greg Lake and Carl Palmer...
is almost entirely based on quartal harmony, from the ostinato in the opening bass figure to the parallel harmony in "Aquatarkus". Also Guitar Synthesis composers such as Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer is an American guitarist and Emmy nominated digital film composer, known for seminal guitar-synth with Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Guitarchitecture....
began to layer fourths and fifths in Guitarchitecture
Guitarchitecture
Guitarchitecture: is a term developed by Chuck Hammer in 1977, describing an approach to soundtrack composition, employing discrete textured guitar layers....
pieces such as "Glacial Guitars", in order to explore sustain as a compositional component. Some classical principles of composition utilized by Gentle Giant in their a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
vocals for the song "Design". Over two alternating fourth chords (F - B - D - A and D - G - C - E) three voices move one after another in canonic
Canon (music)
In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
imitation
Imitation (music)
In music, imitation is when a melody in a polyphonic texture is repeated shortly after its first appearance in a different voice, usually at a different pitch. The melody may vary through transposition, inversion, or otherwise, but retain its original character...
. This imitation allows harsh clashes between the parts to appear as a tension-generating device without disrupting the continuity of the passage.
However, the multitude of examples of quartal harmony must not be used to overlook the facts of the matter: rock and pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
cover a wide field with a great deal of variety, but in most music intended to be a commercial success, accessible to the masses, a clear and simple triadic tonality has formed a hegemony (sometimes extended with a seventh or ninth). Fourth chords most commonly appear as fourth suspensions, for example in Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
's rock ballad "Burn Down the Mission".
Latin American music
The Popular music of Latin American countriesLatin American music
Latin American music, found within Central and South America, is a series of musical styles and genres that mixes influences from Spanish, African and indigenous sources, that has recently become very famous in the US.-Argentina:...
is interrelated with the development of "Latin music" in the U.S., due to considerable cultural exchange.
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Latin music has a tendency toward a slightly faster tempo than the equivalent music in the USA. Quartal harmony found its way into salsa
Salsa music
Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...
and Latin jazz
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is the general term given to jazz with Latin American rhythms.The three main categories of Latin Jazz are Brazilian, Cuban and Puerto Rican:# Brazilian Latin Jazz includes bossa nova...
via the jazz men (such as the playing of John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
), but the concept of rhythm in the Afro-Cuban tradition was also an influence. The guitarist Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
became world-known by combining these influences.
In the Música Popular Brasileira
Música Popular Brasileira
Música Popular Brasileira or MPB designates a trend in post-Bossa Nova urban popular music. It is not a discrete genre but rather a constellation that combines original songwriting and updated versions of traditional Brazilian urban music styles like samba and samba-canção with contemporary...
of Brazil, the guitar has a central role as the harmonic instrument similar to the instrument's role in Rock. As a result, the quartal oriented playing of the guitar was borrowed and the unique rhythmic tradition adapted to fit (as in Tropicalismo
Tropicalismo
Tropicália, also known as Tropicalismo, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry, and music, among other forms. Tropicália was influenced by poesia concreta , a genre of Brazilian avant-garde poetry embodied in the works of Augusto de Campos, Haroldo...
). Even earlier, however, the notable Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...
(1887–1959) wrote pioneering works in the first half of the 20th century combining elements of folk music and the popular music of his homeland with the quartal-harmonic experiments of European and North American classical music.
Jazz and Latin music
- David N. Baker: Jazz Improvisation. Frangipani, Bloomington (Indiana) 1983, ISBN 0-89917-397-7
- Rebeca Mauleón: Salsa Guidebook. For piano and ensemble. Sher Music, Petaluma (Kalifornien) 1993, ISBN 0-9614701-9-4
- David H. Rosenthal: Hard Bop. Jazz and Black music 1955-1965. Oxford University Press (USA), New York 1993, ISBN 0-19-508556-6