Pandiatonicism

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Pandiatonic chord from Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms 3rd movement Stravinsky pandiatonic nonharmonic bass- Symphony of Psalms 3rd mov.png
Pandiatonic chord from Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms 3rd movement

Pandiatonicism is a musical technique of using the diatonic (as opposed to the chromatic) scale without the limitations of functional tonality. Music using this technique is pandiatonic.

Contents

History

The term "pandiatonicism" was coined by Nicolas Slonimsky in the second edition of Music since 1900 to describe chord formations of any number up to all seven degrees of the diatonic scale, "used freely in democratic equality". [2] Triads with added notes such as the sixth, seventh, or second (added tone chords) are the most common, [3] [4] ) while the "most elementary form" is a nonharmonic bass. [1] According to Slonimsky's definition,

Pan-diatonicism sanctions the simultaneous use of any or all seven tones of the diatonic scale, with the bass determining the harmony. The chord-building remains tertian, with the seventh, ninth, or thirteenth chords being treated as consonances functionally equivalent to the fundamental triad. (The eleventh chord is shunned in tonic harmony because of its quartal connotations.) Pan-diatonicism, as consolidation of tonality, is the favorite technique of NEO-CLASSICISM [ sic ]. [5]

Pandiatonic music typically uses the diatonic notes freely in dissonant combinations without conventional resolutions and/or without standard chord progressions, but always with a strong sense of tonality due to the absence of chromatics. "Pandiatonicism possesses both tonal and modal aspects, with a distinct preference for major keys". [2] Characteristic examples include the opening of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, Alfredo Casella's Valse diatonique, and Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella . [6] "The functional importance of the primary triads...remains undiminished in pandiatonic harmony". [2] An opposed point of view holds that pandiatonicism does not project a clear and stable tonic. [7] Pandiatonicism is also referred to as "white-note music," [8] though in fact occasional accidentals may be present.[ citation needed ] Other composers who employed the technique are Maurice Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland, and Roy Harris. [9] Pandiatonicism is also employed in jazz (e.g., added sixth ninth chord) and in Henry Cowell's tone clusters. [10]

Slonimsky later came to regard pandiatonicism as a diatonic counterpart of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, whereby melodies may be made up of seven different notes of the diatonic scale, and then be inverted, retrograded, or both. According to this system, "strict pandiatonic counterpoint" may use progressions of seven different notes in each voice, with no vertical duplication. [9]

The term has been criticized as one of many by which, "Stravinsky's music, everywhere and at once, is made to represent or encompass every conceivable technique", [11] and that has, "become so vague a concept that it has very little meaning or use". [12] Pandiatonic music is usually defined by what it is not, "by the absence of traditional elements": [13] chromatic, atonal, twelve-tone, functional, clear tonic, and/or traditional dissonance resolutions. [14] "It has been applied...to diatonic music lacking harmonic consistency [or]...centricity". [15] Slonimsky himself, making fun of the definition, quoted a professor calling pandiatonicism "C-major that sounds like hell". [16]

Examples of pandiatonicism include the harmonies Aaron Copland used in his populist work, Appalachian Spring , [17] and the minimalist music by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and the later works of John Adams. [18] [19] William Mann describes The Beatles' "This Boy" as, "harmonically...one of their most intriguing, with its chains of pandiatonic clusters". [20]

Pandiatonic music

The following musical works include pandiatonicism.

See also

Related Research Articles

In music, the tonic is the first scale degree of the diatonic scale and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal classical music, popular music, and traditional music. In the movable do solfège system, the tonic note is sung as do. More generally, the tonic is the note upon which all other notes of a piece are hierarchically referenced. Scales are named after their tonics: for instance, the tonic of the C major scale is the note C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atonality</span> Music that lacks a tonal center or key

Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polytonality</span>

Polytonality is the musical use of more than one key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence or polyvalency is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at the same time.

In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones. For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three adjacent whole tones F–G, G–A, and A–B.

In music theory, a leading-tone is a note or pitch which resolves or "leads" to a note one semitone higher or lower, being a lower and upper leading-tone, respectively. Typically, the leading tone refers to the seventh scale degree of a major scale, a major seventh above the tonic. In the movable do solfège system, the leading-tone is sung as ti.

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".

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 jazz scale is any musical scale used in jazz. Many "jazz scales" are common scales drawn from Western European classical music, including the diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and the modes of the ascending melodic minor. All of these scales were commonly used by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, often in ways that directly anticipate jazz practice. Some jazz scales, such as the bebop scales, add additional chromatic passing tones to the familiar diatonic scales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tonality</span> Musical system

Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the tonic chord forms the name given to the key, so in the key of C major, the note C can be both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. The tonic can be a different note in the same scale, when the work is said to be in one of the modes of the scale.

A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three adjacent 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. Variants of the tone cluster include chords comprising adjacent tones separated diatonically, pentatonically, or microtonally. On the piano, such clusters often involve the simultaneous striking of neighboring white or black keys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Semitone</span> Musical interval

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent notes in a 12-tone scale. For example, C is adjacent to C♯; the interval between them is a semitone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Added tone chord</span> Chord made of a tertian triad and a miscellaneous fourth note

An added tone chord, or added note chord, is a non-tertian chord composed of a triad and an extra "added" note. Any tone that is not a seventh factor is commonly categorized as an added tone. It can be outside the tertian sequence of ascending thirds from the root, such as the added sixth or fourth, or it can be in a chord that doesn't consist of a continuous stack of thirds, such as the added thirteenth. The concept of added tones is convenient in that all notes may be related to familiar chords.

The term sixth chord refers to two different kinds of chord, the first in classical music and the second in modern popular music.

Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses only seven different notes, rather than the twelve available on a standard piano keyboard. Music is chromatic when it uses more than just these seven notes.

The modern Lydian mode is a seven-tone musical scale formed from a rising pattern of pitches comprising three whole tones, a semitone, two more whole tones, and a final semitone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harmonic major scale</span>

In music theory, the harmonic major scale is a musical scale found in some music from the common practice era and now used occasionally, most often in jazz. In George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept it is the fifth mode (V) of the Lydian Diminished scale. It corresponds to the Raga Sarasangi in Indian Carnatic music.

In music, polymodal chromaticism is the use of any and all musical modes sharing the same tonic simultaneously or in succession and thus creating a texture involving all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. Alternately it is the free alteration of the other notes in a mode once its tonic has been established.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diatonic and chromatic</span> Terms in music theory to characterize scales

Diatonic 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. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.

<i>Inscape</i> (Copland) 1967 musical composition for orchestra by Aaron Copland

Inscape is a 1967 musical composition for orchestra by Aaron Copland, approximately twelve to thirteen minutes in length, and commissioned by and dedicated to the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary. Composed using the twelve-tone technique, the piece has been considered less accessible than much of Copland's earlier music. It is named for Gerard Manley Hopkins's term "inscape", invented:

to suggest 'a quasi-mystical illumination, a sudden perception of that deeper pattern, order, and unity which gives meaning to external forms.' This description, it seems to me, applies more truly to the creation of music than to any of the other arts.

In music, a common tone is a pitch class that is a member of, or common to two or more chords or sets. Typically, it refers to a note shared between two chords in a chord progression. According to H.E. Woodruff:

Any tone contained in two successive chords is a common tone. Chords written upon two consecutive degrees of the [diatonic] scale can have no tones in common. All other chords [in the diatonic scale] have common tones. Common tones are also called connecting tones, and in part-writing, are to be retained in the same voice. Chords which are four or five degrees apart have one common tone. Chords which are three or six degrees apart have two common tones. Chords which are one or seven degrees apart have no tone in common.

References

  1. 1 2 Andriessen & Schönberger 2006, 57.
  2. 1 2 3 Kostelanetz 2013, 465.
  3. ↑ Anon. 2001.
  4. ↑ Kennedy 2006.
  5. ↑ Slonimsky 1938, xxii.
  6. ↑ Latham 1992.
  7. 1 2 Simms 1986, 63–64.
  8. 1 2 Machlis 1979, 163.
  9. 1 2 Slonimsky 1947, iv.
  10. ↑ Kostelanetz 2013, 517.
  11. ↑ van den Toorn 1975, 105.
  12. ↑ Woodward 2009, 1.
  13. ↑ Woodward 2009, iii.
  14. ↑ Woodward 2009, 3.
  15. ↑ Tymoczko 2011, 188n31.
  16. ↑ Woodward 2009, 2.
  17. ↑ Jaffe 1992, 30–31.
  18. ↑ Dahlhaus, et al. 2001.
  19. 1 2 3 Jaffe 1992, 28.
  20. 1 2 Mann 1963 cited in Everett 2001 , 204
  21. ↑ Everett 1999, 109.
  22. ↑ Hepokoski 1984, 48.
  23. ↑ Tymoczko 2011, 188.
  24. ↑ Schiff 1997, 81.
  25. ↑ Slonimsky 2000, 256.
  26. ↑ Jaffe 1992, 29.
  27. ↑ Strassburg 1976.
  28. ↑ Waters 2008, 104.
  29. ↑ Daniels 1966.

Sources

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  • Anon. 2001. "Pandiatonicism". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
  • Dahlhaus, Carl, Julian Anderson, Charles Wilson, Richard Cohn, and Brian Hyer. 2001. "Harmony". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
  • Daniels, Arthur. 1966. "Heitor Villa-Lobos: String Quartet No. 10" (review). Notes , second series 22, no. 3 (March): 1108.
  • Everett, Walter. 1999. The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through the Anthology. Oxford. ISBN   9780195129410.
  • Everett, Walter. 2001. The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-514105-4.
  • Hepokoski, James A. 1984. "Formulaic Openings in Debussy". 19th-Century Music 8, no. 1 (Summer): 44–59.
  • Jaffe, Stephen. 1992. "Conversation between SJ and JS on the New Tonality". Contemporary Music Review 6, no. 2:27–38.
  • Kennedy, Michael. 2006. "Pandiatonicism". The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition, revised; edited by Joyce Bourne. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-861459-3.
  • Kostelanetz, Richard. 2013. A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN   9781136806193. Kostelanetz appears to be quoting Slonimsky.
  • Latham, Alison (ed.). 1992. "Pandiatonicism [Pandiatonism]". The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
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  • Mann, William. 1963. "London". The Times (December 27).
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  • Slonimsky, Nicolas, 1947. Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN   0-02-611850-5. Reprinted, Schirmer Trade Books, 1975. ISBN   978-0825614491.
  • Slonimsky, Nicolas. 2000. The Listener's Companion: The Great Composers and Their Works, edited by Electra Yourke. New York: Schirmer Trade Books. ISBN   9780825672781.
  • Strassburg, Robert. 1976. "Ned Rorem: String Quartet No. 2" (review). Notes , second series 33, no. 1 (September): 166.
  • Tymoczko, Dmitri. 2011. A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-971435-3.
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  • Waters, Robert Francis. 2008. Déodat de Séverac: Musical Identity in Fin de Siècle France. Aldershot, Hants., and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN   9780754641056.
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