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Dan Coren
Against gobbledygook:
Why can't musicians speak English?
DAN COREN
Upon hearing an account of a cat that rescued its owners by alerting them to a fire, Louie the dog— the unofficial central character in Chip Dunham’s comic strip “Overboard”— asks, “How could a big, professional newspaper like that misspell ‘dog’ so badly?” Now I ask you to consider the following excerpts from the “Musical Terms” section of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s December Playbill— a jumbled mish-mash of circular definitions that fail to communicate any useful information.
• Octave: The interval between any two notes that are seven diatonic (non-chromatic) scale degrees apart. Two notes an octave apart are different only in their relative registers (e.g., c-c’ d-d’).
• Diatonism: Music whose tonality is predominantly nonchromatic (such as the works of Haydn and Mozart).
• Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord.
• Tonality: The orientation of melodies and harmonies towards a referential (or tonic) pitch class.
To paraphrase Louie the dog: How could such a big, professional orchestra mangle the simple concept of an octave so badly?
As someone who tries hard to demystify concepts like these, I really don’t want to hurt the feelings of anyone else who’s attempting the same thing (this section of the program had no byline). But this is simply awful writing.
What, I ask you, does “seven diatonic scale degrees apart” mean? What in the world is “a referential pitch class”? Tones outside a chord (whatever that means) might or might not be chromatic. If you’re going to use the noun “diatonism,” then you should use the parallel construction “chromaticism.” Except that “diatonism” isn’t a word: If you Google it, you’ll be asked, “Did you mean “diatonicism?” Where is Bernard Jacobson, the Orchestra’s former musicologist, when you need him?
As bad as these definitions are, though, I wouldn’t bother shooting them as they haplessly swim around in their barrel were it not for the most egregious error of all: the idea that Mozart is primarily a diatonic composer.
Let me take a shot at elucidating the notorious terms “diatonicism” and its constant companion, “chromaticism.”
Diatonicism first
If you read my last sonata-form article, you’ll remember the descending scale that starts “Joy to the World.” By definition, any music that uses this set of pitches and no others is purely diatonic. If you grew up in this country, you are probably familiar with a great deal of purely diatonic music like “Joy to the World,” “Deck the Halls,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Happy Birthday to You”— that vast oral tradition of religious, patriotic and folk songs our culture shares– music that uses no notes outside the major scale.
For an example from the Classical repertory, here’s the beginning of the exposition from the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the most spectacularly diatonic stretch of music I can think of. This passage contains not one single note outside the C major scale, and although right after the example ends it does begin its modulation to the dominant, the movement spends an astonishing percentage of its duration shooting off purely diatonic fireworks like this. Beethoven, despite the fact that he revolutionized key-relationships in sonata-form, was the ultimate diatonicist. It’s no accident that he wrote a set of variations on “God Save the King” and he spent almost 20 years fiddling around with that paradigm of a diatonic tune, the “Ode to Joy,” before he got it right.
Now for chromaticism
Any music that introduces even a single note outside the scale is by definition chromatic. Unlike pregnancy, however, chromaticism can be expressed in degrees; a lot of pieces you know well are just a little bit chromatic. For example, in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the second syllable of “early” in “Dawn’s early light” is a chromatic note. “White Christmas” is a bit more chromatic: The italicized syllables in “…of a white Christmas” are both chromatic, and in fact, the sentimental character of this perfect song rests on its use of mild chromatic melody notes and chords. In these examples, which don’t change key at all, the tension of the chromatic tones serves to strengthen the gravitational field of the tonic.
However, any music that does change key– that is, modulates— is chromatic as well. The history of 19th-Century and early 20th-Century classical music is sometimes presented as the story of music becoming more and more modulatory, of tonality being progressively engulfed in chromaticism.
Mozart the innocent (not)
This is an overly simplified version of a vast and complicated topic– it completely ignores Debussy and Russian music and doesn’t account for Brahms – but it does describe one path away from tonality, a path leading to the opening of the last movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and, just a few years later, Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 11 piano music.
But one of the unfortunate offshoots of this progressively chromatic view of music history is the idea that the music of Mozart and his contemporaries exemplified a sort of idyllic, pre-chromatic (and thus primarily diatonic) innocence, a musical world in which this spectacularly chromatic passage would have been unthinkable.
A wild Mozart passage
This music is, as you might have guessed, by Mozart, from the slow introduction of his String Quartet, K. 465. Admittedly, it’s a famously extreme example– but not as extreme as you might think. Here are two other examples, a wild modulatory passage from Mozart’s String Quartet K. 590, and another from one of Mozart’s most famous pieces, his 21st Piano Concerto, K. 467.
Since tonality is so strong in the Classical style, Mozart’s chromaticism surely doesn’t sound like Mahler’s or Schoenberg’s. But diatonic music is actually relatively rare in Mozart. (It’s ironic, and completely unintentional, that the music I’m using as the basis for my essays on sonata-form— the first movement of his Linz Symphony— is one of his least chromatic works.) The sweet sensuality that permeates this passage from K. 467 and so much of Mozart’s music comes from the chromatic melodies and harmonies he was absolutely addicted to, and you will find harmonies in Mozart’s music that even Wagner— the composer of Tristan und Isolde, that apotheosis of unrelieved erotic chromaticism— could never have imagined.
In Mozart’s music, as in the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms, chromaticism, far from being the natural enemy of tonality, is its indispensable partner.
To read responses, click here.
Why can't musicians speak English?
DAN COREN
Upon hearing an account of a cat that rescued its owners by alerting them to a fire, Louie the dog— the unofficial central character in Chip Dunham’s comic strip “Overboard”— asks, “How could a big, professional newspaper like that misspell ‘dog’ so badly?” Now I ask you to consider the following excerpts from the “Musical Terms” section of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s December Playbill— a jumbled mish-mash of circular definitions that fail to communicate any useful information.
• Octave: The interval between any two notes that are seven diatonic (non-chromatic) scale degrees apart. Two notes an octave apart are different only in their relative registers (e.g., c-c’ d-d’).
• Diatonism: Music whose tonality is predominantly nonchromatic (such as the works of Haydn and Mozart).
• Chromatic: Relating to tones foreign to a given key (scale) or chord.
• Tonality: The orientation of melodies and harmonies towards a referential (or tonic) pitch class.
To paraphrase Louie the dog: How could such a big, professional orchestra mangle the simple concept of an octave so badly?
As someone who tries hard to demystify concepts like these, I really don’t want to hurt the feelings of anyone else who’s attempting the same thing (this section of the program had no byline). But this is simply awful writing.
What, I ask you, does “seven diatonic scale degrees apart” mean? What in the world is “a referential pitch class”? Tones outside a chord (whatever that means) might or might not be chromatic. If you’re going to use the noun “diatonism,” then you should use the parallel construction “chromaticism.” Except that “diatonism” isn’t a word: If you Google it, you’ll be asked, “Did you mean “diatonicism?” Where is Bernard Jacobson, the Orchestra’s former musicologist, when you need him?
As bad as these definitions are, though, I wouldn’t bother shooting them as they haplessly swim around in their barrel were it not for the most egregious error of all: the idea that Mozart is primarily a diatonic composer.
Let me take a shot at elucidating the notorious terms “diatonicism” and its constant companion, “chromaticism.”
Diatonicism first
If you read my last sonata-form article, you’ll remember the descending scale that starts “Joy to the World.” By definition, any music that uses this set of pitches and no others is purely diatonic. If you grew up in this country, you are probably familiar with a great deal of purely diatonic music like “Joy to the World,” “Deck the Halls,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Happy Birthday to You”— that vast oral tradition of religious, patriotic and folk songs our culture shares– music that uses no notes outside the major scale.
For an example from the Classical repertory, here’s the beginning of the exposition from the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the most spectacularly diatonic stretch of music I can think of. This passage contains not one single note outside the C major scale, and although right after the example ends it does begin its modulation to the dominant, the movement spends an astonishing percentage of its duration shooting off purely diatonic fireworks like this. Beethoven, despite the fact that he revolutionized key-relationships in sonata-form, was the ultimate diatonicist. It’s no accident that he wrote a set of variations on “God Save the King” and he spent almost 20 years fiddling around with that paradigm of a diatonic tune, the “Ode to Joy,” before he got it right.
Now for chromaticism
Any music that introduces even a single note outside the scale is by definition chromatic. Unlike pregnancy, however, chromaticism can be expressed in degrees; a lot of pieces you know well are just a little bit chromatic. For example, in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the second syllable of “early” in “Dawn’s early light” is a chromatic note. “White Christmas” is a bit more chromatic: The italicized syllables in “…of a white Christmas” are both chromatic, and in fact, the sentimental character of this perfect song rests on its use of mild chromatic melody notes and chords. In these examples, which don’t change key at all, the tension of the chromatic tones serves to strengthen the gravitational field of the tonic.
However, any music that does change key– that is, modulates— is chromatic as well. The history of 19th-Century and early 20th-Century classical music is sometimes presented as the story of music becoming more and more modulatory, of tonality being progressively engulfed in chromaticism.
Mozart the innocent (not)
This is an overly simplified version of a vast and complicated topic– it completely ignores Debussy and Russian music and doesn’t account for Brahms – but it does describe one path away from tonality, a path leading to the opening of the last movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and, just a few years later, Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 11 piano music.
But one of the unfortunate offshoots of this progressively chromatic view of music history is the idea that the music of Mozart and his contemporaries exemplified a sort of idyllic, pre-chromatic (and thus primarily diatonic) innocence, a musical world in which this spectacularly chromatic passage would have been unthinkable.
A wild Mozart passage
This music is, as you might have guessed, by Mozart, from the slow introduction of his String Quartet, K. 465. Admittedly, it’s a famously extreme example– but not as extreme as you might think. Here are two other examples, a wild modulatory passage from Mozart’s String Quartet K. 590, and another from one of Mozart’s most famous pieces, his 21st Piano Concerto, K. 467.
Since tonality is so strong in the Classical style, Mozart’s chromaticism surely doesn’t sound like Mahler’s or Schoenberg’s. But diatonic music is actually relatively rare in Mozart. (It’s ironic, and completely unintentional, that the music I’m using as the basis for my essays on sonata-form— the first movement of his Linz Symphony— is one of his least chromatic works.) The sweet sensuality that permeates this passage from K. 467 and so much of Mozart’s music comes from the chromatic melodies and harmonies he was absolutely addicted to, and you will find harmonies in Mozart’s music that even Wagner— the composer of Tristan und Isolde, that apotheosis of unrelieved erotic chromaticism— could never have imagined.
In Mozart’s music, as in the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms, chromaticism, far from being the natural enemy of tonality, is its indispensable partner.
To read responses, click here.
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