In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the flat, natural and sharp symbols, among others, mark such notes—and those symbols are also called accidentals. In some kinds of musical style, there are also the half sharp as well as half flat, sometimes also called quarter tone.
In music, a whole-tone scale is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole tone. In twelve-tone equal temperament, there are only two complementary whole-tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales. A single whole-tone scale can also be thought of as a "six-tone equal temperament".
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law of the twelve tones" in 1919. In 1923, Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) developed his own, better-known version of 12-tone technique, which became associated with the "Second Viennese School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the first decades of its existence. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th-century composers. Many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or actively opposed the technique, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky, eventually adopted it in their music.
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the ancohemitonic symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this symmetrical scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 43 enharmonically non-equivalent, transpositionally non-equivalent eight-note sets.
A chord, in music, is any harmonic set of pitches consisting of multiple notes that are sounded simultaneously, or nearly so. For many practical and theoretical purposes, arpeggios and other types of broken chords may also be considered as chords in the right musical context.
An augmented triad is a chord, made up of two major thirds. The term augmented triad arises from an augmented triad being considered a major chord whose top note (fifth) is raised. When using popular-music symbols, it is indicated by the symbol "+" or "aug". For example, the augmented triad built on A♭, written as A♭+, has pitches A♭-C-E:
In music theory, a trichord is a group of three different pitch classes found within a larger group. A trichord is a contiguous three-note set from a musical scale or a twelve-tone row.
In music, the mystic chord or Prometheus chord is a six-note synthetic chord and its associated scale, or pitch collection; which loosely serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for some of the later pieces by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin, however, did not use the chord directly but rather derived material from its transpositions.
In music, a hexachord is a six-note series, as exhibited in a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in this sense during the Middle Ages and adapted in the 20th century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory. The word is taken from the Greek: ἑξάχορδος, compounded from ἕξ and χορδή, and was also the term used in music theory up to the 18th century for the interval of a sixth.
In music using the twelve tone technique, combinatoriality is a quality shared by twelve-tone tone rows whereby each section of a row and a proportionate number of its transformations combine to form aggregates. Much as the pitches of an aggregate created by a tone row do not need to occur simultaneously, the pitches of a combinatorially created aggregate need not occur simultaneously. Arnold Schoenberg, creator of the twelve-tone technique, often combined P-0/I-5 to create "two aggregates, between the first hexachords of each, and the second hexachords of each, respectively."
In music theory, complement refers to either traditional interval complementation, or the aggregate complementation of twelve-tone and serialism.
In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole-tone scale, C D E F♯ G♯ A♯ C; the augmented scale, C D♯ E G A♭ B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F♯ A B♭ C; and the blues scale, C E♭ F G♭ G B♭ C. A hexatonic scale can also be formed by stacking perfect fifths. This results in a diatonic scale with one note removed.
A set in music theory, as in mathematics and general parlance, is a collection of objects. In musical contexts the term is traditionally applied most often to collections of pitches or pitch-classes, but theorists have extended its use to other types of musical entities, so that one may speak of sets of durations or timbres, for example.
In musical tuning and harmony, the Tonnetz is a conceptual lattice diagram representing tonal space first described by Leonhard Euler in 1739. Various visual representations of the Tonnetz can be used to show traditional harmonic relationships in European classical music.
A trope or tropus may refer to a variety of different concepts in medieval, 20th-, and 21st-century music.
Neo-Riemannian theory is a loose collection of ideas present in the writings of music theorists such as David Lewin, Brian Hyer, Richard Cohn, and Henry Klumpenhouwer. What binds these ideas is a central commitment to relating harmonies directly to each other, without necessary reference to a tonic. Initially, those harmonies were major and minor triads; subsequently, neo-Riemannian theory was extended to standard dissonant sonorities as well. Harmonic proximity is characteristically gauged by efficiency of voice leading. Thus, C major and E minor triads are close by virtue of requiring only a single semitonal shift to move from one to the other. Motion between proximate harmonies is described by simple transformations. For example, motion between a C major and E minor triad, in either direction, is executed by an "L" transformation. Extended progressions of harmonies are characteristically displayed on a geometric plane, or map, which portrays the entire system of harmonic relations. Where consensus is lacking is on the question of what is most central to the theory: smooth voice leading, transformations, or the system of relations that is mapped by the geometries. The theory is often invoked when analyzing harmonic practices within the Late Romantic period characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, including work of Schubert, Liszt, Wagner and Bruckner.
In music, the 'Farben' chord is a chord, in ascending order C–G♯–B–E–A, named after its use in Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op.16, No. 3, "Farben" by Arnold Schoenberg. Its unordered pitch-class content in normal form is 01348, its Forte number is 5-z17, in the taxonomy of Allen Forte.
6-Z44 (012569), known as the Schoenberg hexachord, is Arnold Schoenberg's signature hexachord, as one transposition contains the pitches [A], Es, C, H, B, E, G, E♭, B, and B♭ being Es, H, and B in German.
Movements is a 1959 five-movement work for piano and orchestra by Igor Stravinsky lasting about ten minutes. It was written during his serial period and shows his dedication to that idiom as well as the influence of Anton Webern.
In music theory, the chromatic hexachord is the hexachord consisting of a consecutive six-note segment of the chromatic scale. It is the first hexachord as ordered by Forte number, and its complement is the chromatic hexachord at the tritone. For example, zero through five and six through eleven. On C:
