# Wonderful Chromaticism



## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Post your favourite moments of chromaticism - in the vein of Wagner's Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde or Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht..


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## Herzeleide (Feb 25, 2008)

I'm going to challenge the hegemony that common-practice music holds on this forum and say Machaut's wonderful chanson _Pas de tor en thiès païs_. I love all the juicy dissonances of late medieval music.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Herzeleide said:


> I'm going to challenge the hegemony that common-practice music holds on this forum and say Machaut's wonderful chanson _Pas de tor en thiès païs_. I love all the juicy dissonances of late medieval music.


Well, if you're going there, I'll go with John Dowland's later songs, "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" and others. I had trouble thinking of more modern chromaticism because I think we expect it more, so it doesn't sound as novel.

However the question was about chromaticism n the vein of Wagner's Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde or Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, so I'll bow out in ignorance.


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## Herzeleide (Feb 25, 2008)

Weston said:


> I had trouble thinking of more modern chromaticism because I think we expect it more, so it doesn't sound as novel.


Well, it's irrelevant to much post-tonal, total-chromatic music; in this music, it would be the equivalent of asking what people's favourite instance of tonality is in tonal music!


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## andruini (Apr 14, 2009)

I don't know much.. But I do know and love Bartók's Four Slovak Songs.


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## JoeGreen (Nov 17, 2008)

OH, boy there are so many, so this is going to be tough, well one I can think of is the Fairy scene in Verdi's _Falstaff_, then there are all those lovely chromatic modulations that Mozart does....oh I'll be back when I can have a set list. Tere are just too many.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

I once saw someone (in another thread, I think) say that Wagner's music was often too chromatic to be enjoyable. This has always puzzled me. Chromatic passages in music never strike me as ugly or anything like that. It merely does what its name says it does: add color.


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

And more than colour, emotion. Parsifal is the redefinition of sublimity.


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

Bach said:


> And more than colour, emotion. Parsifal is the redefinition of sublimity.


I agree! Good point!


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## PostMinimalist (May 14, 2008)

By chromaticism I take it you mean instances of chramotic writing in an otherwise mainly diatonic piece? Then I'd go for the final few bars of the Allemande from the 5th Fench Suite by Bach. If you mean a tonal but mostly chromatic piece then pick any of the chorale preludes by Max Reger. If you mean making use of the full chromatic scale without nescesarily being tonal then Scheonberg's Chamber Symphony comes to mind, as does a lot of Messiaen (or however you spell it!). Olly was always good at sitting on the fence as far as chromatic tonality was concerned.
FC


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## bdelykleon (May 21, 2009)

Berg's Sonata is a favorite of the very rare example of a late-romantic piano piece. I love it.


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## JoeGreen (Nov 17, 2008)

Ah, Yes thanks Post Minimalist, Messiaen!!! His L'Oiseaux Exotiques is just full of it. I love it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I've liked Bach's Sinfonia No. 9 ever since I heard G.G. play it. I believe it has 11 of the 12 notes. Of course, these can be seen as passing notes and the like, since the piece is tonal and is clearly rooted in the key of F minor. 

I really see the term 'chromatic' as referring to an 'expansion' of tonality to its boundaries, which would mean 'chromatic root movement' into distant tonal areas.

The tonal system, with its diatonic scale, contains within itself the roots of its own 'undoing' or expansion into chromaticism, since the V-I of tonality is related to the chromatic scale, via 'tritone substitution.' As we all know, going around the circle of fifths yields all twelve notes before repeating. Therefore, there is a progression into chromaticism that is visible in this process.

The fifth, and its inversion, the fourth, are also related to chromaticism in this following way: Intervals can be seen as chromatic steps, expressed as numbers. Major second=2, minor third=3, major third=4, tritone=6, and each (excepting the tritone, which is self-inverting) has its respective inversion, M2=m7, m3=M6, and M3=m6. These 2, 3, and 4 intervals are all 'recursive,' meaning that when 'stacked,' they remain within the octave and repeat or rejoin themselves in a closed loop. These intervals, seen as numbers, are all divisible into 12, except the fourth (5 chromatic steps), and the fifth (7 chromatic steps). For 5 or 7 to relate to 12, we have 60 for 5x12, and 84, for 7x12. These common denominators are larger than 12, thus taking the 'recursive cycle of stacking them' well outside the parameters of the 12, or octave. In this way we see how fourths and fifths, if applied to root movement, are what gives tonality its potential for expansion into chromatic areas. The chromatic scale itself was generated by Pythagoras' stacking of fifths.
Beethoven made use of tritone substitution by converting diminished seventh chords into flat-nine dominants. The easiest explanation of this is to look at the VII chord of our C major diatonic scale. This diminished chord, if expanded into a diminished seventh, is B-D-F-Ab (or G#). It resolves to I. It can be seen as an incomplete G b9 if we add the imaginary root "G" below, making it a G-B-D-F-Ab, which functions as a dominant chord with its b7 and b9. Using this "imaginary root" is noted by both Schoenberg and Piston in their respective tomes on harmony.


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