# Harmony as color and modernism



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

As it is well known, Debussy is often credited as the founder of the musical modernism that dominated new music in the 20th century. Why? Because, in his 1894 piece Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune he systematically and deliberately started to introduce there chords and scales that had no evident harmonic functional place in the tonal structure of the piece. These devices have then been called as 'harmonic colorations', a radical new type of color notion in music, different than the usual timbre-based one.

What is this harmonic color? What is its role in the development of the modernist style? Which other composers where exploring this at the same time and parallel to Debussy, and even before him? What is the role of dissonance and consonace in all this? Complexity and simplicity of sound waves, the inner ear? Is this a key aspect of modernist music or there are others?

Note: if you decide to participate in this thread, please do it in a constructive way. Bashing of modernist music just because you don't like it is best suited to other threads. Thank you.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

The Romantic era seems crucial in the development of dissonance as expressive harmonic color, though it definitely wasn't at a modern level yet. I'm not sure if I know any composers who were developing modern ideas during the time of Debussy. The first modernists I know are the Second Viennese School, and they didn't seem as concerned with harmonic color, except for Berg. Rather than fully atonal modernism, I think the most expressive and colorful music styles are polytonal or chromatic in an abstract way, like the music of Feldman, Ives, and Stravinsky to name a few. The harmonies of those composers are much more rich and colorful than purely tonally harmony in my opinion.

I like to think about the physics of the sound waves created by music. Consonant harmonies resonate together well, but I find them uninteresting. Common practice figures apparently thought the same as well since one of the "rules" is to avoid open 5ths. Dissonant harmonies have a much more complex shape and sound much more interesting to my ears. I think a structured abstract balance of consonance and dissonance is the most colorful style of composition, especially when done slowly and quietly to allow the harmonies to freely resonate together and be heard distinctly, like in the chamber music of Feldman and Ives.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Fredx2098 said:


> I like to think about the physics of the sound waves created by music. Consonant harmonies resonate together well, but I find them uninteresting. Common practice figures apparently thought the same as well since one of the "rules" is to avoid open 5ths.


As an undergraduate music major I had to take 60 weeks of harmony...this "rule" was never taught.

That is, of course, because there was/is no such rule.

Do you mean, perhaps, parallel fifths? If so, the avoidance had/has nothing to with consonance/dissonance. The problem with such parallelisms has to do with good voice-leading, the goal of which is the relative independence of parts.

I have a feeling though, that you did mean open fifths...such as Beethoven's use here:


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> Do you mean, perhaps, parallel fifths? If so, the avoidance had/has nothing to with consonance/dissonance. The problem with such parallelisms has to do with good voice-leading, the goal of which is the relative independence of parts.


I did mean parallel fifths. It doesn't seem like it should be considered problematic except for a piece with only two voices. The only reason I know about the "rule" is because I posted my first compositions on a different website, and one piece was criticized for using parallel fifths, which I did intentionally to create the sound I wanted.


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2018)

I'm guessing that these harmonic colours have to do with the relative density, voicing, register and intervallic structure of chords and the ability to create varying levels of stability and instability thriugh chords that don't function in a typically Common Practice way.

Debussy was influenced by Wagner, and his treatment of stability and instability through the density and register of harmony is, I think, quite interesting even as early as Lohengrin.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

shirime said:


> I'm guessing that these harmonic colours have to do with the relative density, voicing, register and intervallic structure of chords and the ability to create varying levels of stability and instability thriugh chords that don't function in a typically Common Practice way.
> 
> Debussy was influenced by Wagner, and his treatment of stability and instability through the density and register of harmony is, I think, quite interesting even as early as Lohengrin.


Lol, I didn't mention Wagner since I knew you would do it emphatically 

On the other hand, while I think your view is on the right track about which are the factors in a piece that produce these so-called colors, I think the notion can be, nevertheless, a bit elusive when it comes to catching it in detail. I guess it is up to the composer and his intuition to get a good handling of this aspect.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I agree with the OP on the more ambiguous use of chords and harmonic progressions. I think the element Debussy and others were exploiting for colour was in chromaticism, hitherto less used in common practice period.

Here is another example of chromatic colour


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The first composer I can think of in the common practice tradition who used harmony for "color" not required by the basic syntax was Chopin. One of his 24 Preludes adds a minor 7th to the tonic chord at the end, and another of the set has a distinctive "blues" flavor.

If we want to talk about chromaticism, though, we can go all the way back to the Renaissance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

This is an interesting subject, aleazk. I hope more people contribute.



shirime said:


> I'm guessing that these harmonic colours have to do with the relative density, voicing, register and intervallic structure of chords and the ability to create varying levels of stability and instability thriugh chords that don't function in a typically Common Practice way.
> 
> *Debussy was influenced by Wagner, and his treatment of stability and instability through the density and register of harmony is, I think, quite interesting even as early as Lohengrin.*


The influence of Wagner on Debussy hasn't been mentioned often on the forum. Debussy himself was quite conscious of it, and sometimes annoyed by it; he complained that he couldn't get _Parsifal_ out of _Pelleas et Melisande_, and we can hear it plainly in the orchestral interludes of his only completed opera.

In connection with this thread, it occurs to me that Wagner's most famous single harmonic gesture, the first chord in _Tristan_, is an unmistakable proclamation of "harmony as color," even while it retains functional identity within the tonal system. Despite the quarrels among theoreticians, the chord is easily analyzed as an augmented sixth with an appoggiatura, resolving chromatically to the dominant 7th of A minor, the basic key of the prelude. We can in fact hear it as such, but - and this is the significant thing - _not when we first hear it._ Initially, it seems to come out of nowhere, and sounds like, if anything, an inversion of a half-diminished seventh, a chord Wagner uses again and again in his operas precisely for its tonal ambiguity, its usefulness as a harmonic pivot, and its ability to take on a variety of emotional connotations - sensual, ominous, melancholy, et al. In _Tristan_ it returns again and again to perform all these functions and evoke all these feelings, but when we first hear it at the very start it seems to congeal out of the air, harmonically speaking, and leave us still floating when it resolves into something itself unresolved.

Wagner's harmonic effects often lead this "double life"; they may appear or resolve quite satisfactorily and ultimately "feel right" within his expanded, chromatic tonal syntax, yet strike us immediately as singular entities intended to provoke distinct (if mysterious) sensory or emotional meanings. I might call this sort of harmony "semi-coloristic," not yet "Modernist" but a crucial stage along the way which Debussy was quick to understand.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

That makes it all the more fitting that the discussion started with Debussy's _Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun_, which also begins with a Tristan chord. Granted, it's easy for over-eager analysts to interpret any half-diminished 7th chord as a Tristan chord, but the beginning of _Faun_ strikes me as a conscious reference. (For one thing, the chord is approached and followed the same way Wagner's chord is, with an unharmonized melody and then silence. For a second thing, the Greek mythology on which the Faun poem is based is a kind of distillation of the Tristan story, since Pan's longing for Syrinx can only be fulfilled metaphorically, just like Isolde's longing for Tristan at the end of the opera.)

But oh, the difference! Whereas Wagner's half-diminished 7th chord is the ultimate musical symbol of yearning, Debussy's half-diminished 7th chord is pure stasis. Wagner's Tristan chord is searching desparately for fulfillment; Debussy's Tristan chord is decadently satisfied to stay right where it is. Putting the two chords side by side is the perfect illustration of both the similarities and differences between the two composers.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

It seems to me that Debussy's early experiments in harmonic color took the form of extended triads serving as stable sonorities. When he added 7ths and 9ths to triads, it was not for the purpose of adding tension but, on the contrary, to treat those chords as consonances in their own right.

That's why I consider the paradigmatic Debussy piece to be not the _Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun_ but the Sarabande from _Pour le piano_, which takes the notion of extended-triads-as-consonances to a nearly dogmatic level. One way he does this is to use diminished chords and dominant 7ths in parallel motion, thus obviating the need for those harmonies to resolve. (In fact, the piece begins with yet another Tristan chord, but it is followed by a whole string of diminished harmonies, thus making all of them stable sonorities and ignoring any need they might otherwise have to resolve. Take that, Isolde.) More broadly, he rejects as much as possible the whole notion of tendency tones, which for the previous century or so had served as the most reliable harmonic tool for stimulating listeners' emotions. (Think of all those deceptive cadences in Wagner that Woodduck alluded to.) Not a single V-I cadence in the Sarabande has a leading tone, a feat I liken to writing an entire book without using the letter "e." (Finally, the work is an early example of neoclassicism and therefore of the modern fondness for using the distant past as a rejection of romanticism.)

So to get back to the question of other composers of the time who experimented with harmonic color, Debussy was surely influenced by Satie's Sarabandes of the late 1880s. Debussy was one of the few people who was even aware of Satie's existence that early on, and Satie's Sarabandes use extended triads in precisely the same way that Debussy would later use them.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Traditional harmony would focus on the major minor triads, and diatonic scales. But Debussy introduced Oriental modes for colour, and progressions, that are more distant in the circle of fifths. Ravel and Bartok also experimented with Oriental harmony. Tchaikovsky's Chinese Dance in Nutcracker was a heavily Westernized treatment of Oriental sonorities, with standard major/minor accompaniment, while Debussy really moved away the major/minor base.

Prelude to an afternoon of a faun and Claire du Lune is chock full of Oriental modes and progressions.

There is also a larger role of whole tone scales


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eschbeg said:


> That makes it all the more fitting that the discussion started with Debussy's _Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun_, which also begins with a Tristan chord. *Granted, it's easy for over-eager analysts to interpret any half-diminished 7th chord as a Tristan chord, but the beginning of Faun strikes me as a conscious reference.* (For one thing, the chord is approached and followed the same way Wagner's chord is, with an unharmonized melody and then silence. For a second thing, the Greek mythology on which the Faun poem is based is a kind of distillation of the Tristan story, since Pan's longing for Syrinx can only be fulfilled metaphorically, just like Isolde's longing for Tristan at the end of the opera.)
> 
> But oh, the difference! *Whereas Wagner's half-diminished 7th chord is the ultimate musical symbol of yearning, Debussy's half-diminished 7th chord is pure stasis.* Wagner's Tristan chord is searching desparately for fulfillment; Debussy's Tristan chord is decadently satisfied to stay right where it is. Putting the two chords side by side is the perfect illustration of both the similarities and differences between the two composers.


I have to differ with a couple of points in your analysis of these two works. First, your caution against calling any half-diminished 7th a "Tristan chord" is good advice. That chord received its name only because it appears in a specific inversion, in a specific context, at a specific moment in music history, and because it presents a specific problem for analysis. The essence of the problem is that it doesn't sound, upon first hearing, as what it is; its syntactic function - a perfectly ordinary one, as it turns out - is apparent only retrospectively. Interestingly, in _L'Apres-midi_ this "sleight of hand" actually applies more to the unaccompanied flute melody, which is not immediately heard to be in E major, than it does to the first chord, which is easily understood in terms of that key.

Second, I hardly think that Debussy's first chord represents "pure stasis." The inversion Debussy uses does make it less unstable and ambiguous than the real "Tristan chord," but I find it mysterious and suspenseful nonetheless, and it quickly modulates chromatically, as Wagner's does, into a remote dominant 7th - which again, like Wagner's, leaves us in suspense. Your overall point that there's a strong parallel (maybe showing direct influence) between the two works, as well as a difference in mood and sensibility, is certainly right. But I think you're overstating the degree of forward pressure, or "longing," in the Wagner, and understating it in the Debussy, perhaps based on your knowledge of how the two works proceed as wholes and of the two composers' general style, sensibility, and artistic aims.

Debussy was still finding his style in _L'Apres-midi_. Its basic harmonic language is not as un-Tristanesque as the overall effect of the piece would make it seem, and I think its more relaxed and languorous effect derives from many factors, one of which is Debussy's habit of repeating phrases and progressions, oscillating back and forth between chords, before proceeding - something Wagner, for whom dramatic tension and drive is uppermost, does uncommonly, and something which can have a rather "impressionistic" effect when he does it. I suspect Debussy was quite captivated with mood pictures such as Siegfried's forest murmurs and the sinuous dance of Parsifal's flower maidens.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> But I think you're overstating the degree of forward pressure, or "longing," in the Wagner, and understating it in the Debussy, perhaps based on your knowledge of how the two works proceed as wholes and of the two composers' general style, sensibility, and artistic aims.


It is a fair point that the Tristan chord represents longing only with retrospective knowledge of the chord's symbolic function in the opera, and more generally of the opera's symbolic status in the history of romanticism; but then again, that was precisely the knowledge that Debussy was operating from. By the 1890s, the Tristan chord had all kinds of aesthetic and cultural mystique, for the French especially, the 1890s being the height of the French Wagner craze, and for Debussy especially especially, as his personal writings attest. So it would be only half the story to explain Debussy's use of the Tristan harmony without taking into account all the cultural baggage that came with it.

In a similar vein, describing the Faun chord as static seems justified to me not only by its behavior in the music (unlike the Tristan chord, it is repeated exactly at pitch rather than sequenced) but by its cultural context. The very opening lines of the Mallarmé poem on which _Faun_ is based (which was one of the most prominent works to come out of the aforementioned French Wagner craze) present an image of stasis ("These leafy slumbers I would perpetuate"), and nineteenth century paintings of Pan almost uniformly depict him lounging languorously on the banks of the river. I know that it is taboo from a music purist's standpoint for a musical analysis to appeal to "extramusical" stuff like poetry and paintings, but the Debussy of the 1890s, for whom it was a point of pride to associate more with poets and painters than with composers, could not have been any less a music purist. (The Debussy of about 1915 is another story.)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Eschbeg said:


> I know that it is taboo from a music purist's standpoint for a musical analysis to appeal to "extramusical" stuff like poetry and paintings, but the Debussy of the 1890s, for whom it was a point of pride to associate more with poets and painters than with composers, could not have been any less a music purist. (The Debussy of about 1915 is another story.)


It only became taboo in the anti-Romantic 20th century, and it sure as heck doesn't bother me! Wagner was music's greatest tone painter (not excepting Richard Strauss, IMO); the scores of his operas evoke worlds of atmospheric and kinetic sensation so vivid and enveloping as to make the stage almost redundant. No surprise that the symbolists adopted him, and Debussy rode in on the crest of that wave. Tone pictures needn't apologize as long as they're good music, and _L'Apres-midi_ remains one of the best. I still visualize Nijinsky or Nureyev when I hear it.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> No surprise that the symbolists adopted him, and Debussy rode in on the crest of that wave.


Speaking of waves--and apologies for turning your statement into an awful pun!--but for all the Wagnerian parallels in _Faun_ discussed above, I've always heard _La mer_ as Debussy's most Wagnerian work. There are times when I'm listening to the orchestral colors there and I swear I'm hearing _Siegfried_.

(ADDENDUM: In the first decade of the 20th century, it was also _La mer_ rather than _Faun_ that the French perceived as Debussy's first real foray into modern musical territory.)


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

A half-diminished chord can be heard as 'more stable' than a fully diminished despite the fact that it still has a tritone functioning as a destabilizing flat five. 

C-Eb-Gb-Bb could be heard more than one way, regardless of its real analysis; as C half-diminished, or as Eb minor 6 (Eb-Gb-Bb-C). Therefore, it creates its own ambiguity. Remember also that when tritones are inverted, they remain the same interval, the notes simply exchange (C-Gb/Gb-C), so there is a symmetry involved.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Debussy's parallel moving of chords freely is one way he abandons traditional function. By moving major triads in parallel, they become static entities, without the minor/major change in quality which association with a scale would cause. Therefore, he escapes the confines of scales, and this means chromatic freedom.
Also, he could move triads by outlining (in root movements) the notes of other exotic scales, like the whole tone, thereby creating a 'triadic' color effect at the same time he is outlining an exotic scale, thereby confusing the notion of root movement and scales. Beethoven did this in his transition areas of the Ninth Symphony.

So when a triad is separated from its function in a scale, it becomes a "color" or pure sound. But most uneducated listeners don't have to unlearn this; only die-hard traditional academics need to be convinced. Meanwhile, Debussy shocked them all by doing exactly what the Hell he wanted to do, using his ear as his guide. He sounds like one o' them jazzers...


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## les24preludes (May 1, 2018)

I haven't digested all of this yet, but one thing that occurs to me as a classically trained musician who has played many years of jazz is the use of one chord or scale over another. In jazz this can be simplified to e.g. Bb over C or E over C. A very nice example of this is Messiaen's "Les Bergers" from La Nativite du Seigneur. Here's the music plus score.






Go to 10.20 where it's marked modere, joyeux. In bars 8 and 9 the first phrase ends on Ab, Bb, C. But this is over the chord of A minor. We expect A to B to C. The effect is quite magical. It comes across as a kind of "semi-dissonance" which is unexpected but not designed to be jarring as other dissonances are.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

There is the perspective of the spectralists that treat harmonies as synthetic timbres or "colour fields". I find this piece by Vivier to be quite relevant: 





_*Composer's Note:*

Lonely Child is a long song of solitude. For the musical construction I wanted to have total power for expression, for musical development on the piece I was composing without using chords, harmony or counterpoint. I wanted to work up to very homophonic music that would be transformed into one single melody, which would be "intervalized." I had already composed a first melody heard at the beginning of the piece for dancers. I subsequently developed this melody in five "intervalized" melodic fragments that is by adding one note below each note, which creates intervals-thirds, fifths, minor seconds, major seconds etc. If the frequencies of each interval are added, a timbre is created. Thus, there are no longer any chords, and the entire orchestra is then transformed into a timbre. The roughness and the intensity of this timbre depends on the base interval. Musically speaking, there was only one thing I needed to control, which automatically, somehow, would create the rest of the music, that is great beams of color!
_


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

An interesting quote from Ravel on Satie in which he appears to be simultaneously crediting his innovations but also criticizing his music:

"Another significant influence, somewhat unique, and deriving at least partially from Chabrier, is that of Erik Satie, which has had appreciable effect upon Debussy, myself and indeed most of the modern French composers. Satie was possessed of an extremely keen intelligence. His was the inventor's mind par excellence. He was a great experimenter. His experiments may never have reached the degree of development or realization attained by Liszt; but, alike in multiplicity and importance, these experiments have been of inestimable value. Simply and ingeniously Satie pointed the way, but as soon as another musician took to the trail he had indicated, Satie would immediately change his own orientation and without hesitation open up still another path to new fields of experimentation. He thus became the inspiration of countless progressive tendencies; and while he himself may, perhaps, never have wrought out of his discoveries a single complete work of art, nevertheless we have today many such works which might not have come into existence if Satie had never lived."

--Ravel


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