Composers who use the techniques of quartal harmony include Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Alexander Scriabin, Alban Berg, Leonard Bernstein, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. (Herder 1987, 78)
Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony Op. 9 (1906) displays quartal harmony. The work begins not from tonal harmony, but instead begins with a fictitious tonal-centre: the first measures construct a five-part fourth chord with the notes C – F – B♭ – E♭ – A♭ distributed over several instruments. The composer then picks out this vertical quartal harmony in a horizontal sequence of fourths from the horns, eventually leading to a passage of triadic quartal harmony (i.e., chords of three notes, each layer a fourth apart).[citation needed]
Six-note horizontal fourth chord in Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony Op. 9
Vertical quartal-harmony in the opening measures of Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony Op. 9 Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:SchoenbergOp9.mid
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Schoenberg was also one of the first to write on the theoretical consequences of this harmonic innovation. In his Theory of Harmony (Harmonielehre) of 1911 he wrote: "The construction of chords by superimposing fourths can lead to a chord that contains all the twelve notes of the chromatic scale; hence, such construction does manifest a possibility for dealing systematically with those harmonic phenomena that already exist in the works of some of us:
seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve-part chords... But the quartal construction makes possible, as I said, accommodation of all phenomena of harmony" (Schoenberg 1978, 406–407). Other examples of quartal harmony appear in Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1.
Quartal chord from Schoenberg's String
Quartet No. 1 Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Schoenberg string
quartet quartal chord.mid
Quartal harmony from Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1
Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Schoenberg string quartet exc. quartal chord.mid
Webern, Ives, and Bartók
For Anton Webern, the importance of quartal harmony lay in the possibility of building new sounds. In 1912, he wrote, "With alteration the fourth-chord never need belong to tonal harmony, but can be free of all tonal relationships."Wikipedia:Quotations After hearing Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Webern wrote "You must write something like that, too!" (The Path to the New Music, p.48. "So was mußt du auch machen!"Wikipedia:Citing sources#What information to include) Shortly after, he wrote his Four Pieces for Violin and Piano Op. 7, using quartal harmony as a formal principle, which was also used in later works.[citation needed]
Uninfluenced by the theoretical and practical work of the Second Viennese School, the American Charles Ives meanwhile wrote in 1906 a song called "The Cage" (No. 64 of his collection, 114 songs), in which the piano part contained four-part fourth chords accompanying a vocal line which moves in whole tones.[citation needed]
Other 20th-century composers, like Béla Bartók with his piano work Mikrokosmos and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, as well as Paul Hindemith, Carl Orff and Igor Stravinsky, employed quartal harmony in their work.
These composers joined Romantic elements with Baroque music, folk songs and their peculiar rhythm and harmony with the open harmony of fourths and fifths.[citation needed]
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Fourths in Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos V, No. 131, Fourths (Quartes) Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Bartok Mikrokosmos Quartes for wikipedia.mid
Hindemith
Hindemith constructed large parts of his symphonic work Symphony: Mathis der Maler by means of fourth and fifth intervals. These steps are a restructuring of fourth chords (C – D – G becomes the fourth chord D – G – C), or other mixtures of fourths and fifths (D♯ – A♯ – D♯ – G♯ – C♯ in measure 3 of the example). Hindemith was, however, not a proponent of an explicit quartal harmony. In his 1937 writing Unterweisung im Tonsatz (The Craft of Musical Composition, Hindemith 1937), he wrote that "notes have a family of relationships, that are the bindings of tonality, in which the ranking of intervals is unambiguous," so much so, indeed, that in the art of triadic composition "...the musician is bound by this, as the painter to his primary colours, the architect to the three dimensions." He lined up the harmonic and melodic aspects of music in a row in which the octave ranks first, then the fifth and the third, and then the fourth. "The strongest and most unique harmonic interval after the octave is the fifth, the prettiest nevertheless is the third by right of the chordal effects of its Combination tones."
Fourth and fifth writing in the second movement of Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler
Others
In his Theory of Harmony (Schoenberg 1978, 407): "Besides myself my students Dr. Anton Webern and Alban Berg have written these harmonies (fourth chords), but also the Hungarian Béla Bartók or the Viennese Franz Schreker, who both go a similar way to Debussy, Dukas and perhaps also Puccini, are not far off.
British composer Michael Tippett also employed quartal harmonies extensively in works from his middle period.
Examples are his Piano Concerto and the opera The Midsummer Marriage. An almost constant quartal harmony is used by Bertold Hummel in his Second Symphony of 1966. A similarly obvious example is the work of Mieczysław Weinberg. Hermann Schroeder alternated in his works using fragments of Gregorian Chant between quintal and quartal harmony. Also the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski devised a use that allows many harmonic combinations to be applied to a single part, having several combinations that may be tried against it, like fourths with
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whole tones, tritones with semitones, or other possibilities.[citation needed]
In the first movement of Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie, a six-note combination is constructed in pieces from fourths and tritones, much like in the music of Schoenberg and Scriabin. Much of Messiaen's work applies quartal harmony, moderated by his development of what he called "Modes of limited transposition".[citation needed]
A preference for quartal harmony is present in the works of Leo Brouwer (10 Etudes for Guitar), Robert Delanoff (Zwiegespräche für Orgel), Ivan Vïshnegradsky, Tōru Takemitsu (Cross Hatch) and Hanns Eisler (Hollywood-Elegy). In the 1960s, the use of tone clusters juxtaposing minor and major seconds pushed aside quartal harmony somewhat. The orchestral work of György Ligeti, Atmosphères of 1961, makes extensive use of such sounds.[citation needed] The works of the Filipino composer Elisio Pajaro (1915–1984) are characterised by quartal and quintal harmonies, as well as by dissonant counterpoint and polychords (Kasilag 2001).
As a transition to the history of jazz, George Gershwin may be mentioned. In the first movement of his Concerto in F altered fourth chords descend chromatically in the right hand with a chromatic scale leading upward in the left hand.
Jazz
The style of jazz, having an eclectic harmonic orbit, was in its early days overtaken (until perhaps the Swing of the 1930s) by the vocabulary of 19th century European music. Important influences come thereby from opera, operetta, military bands as well as from the piano music of Classical and Romantic composers, and even that of the Impressionists. Jazz musicians had a clear interest in harmonic richness of colour, for which quartal harmony provided possibilities, as used by pianists and arrangers like Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Bill Evans (Hester 2000, 199) Milt Buckner (Hester 2000, 199) Chick Corea (Herder 1987, 78; Scivales 2005, 203) Herbie Hancock (Herder 1987, 78; Scivales 2005, 203) and especially McCoy Tyner (Herder 1987, 78; Scivales 2005, 205). Nevertheless, the older jazz usually handled fourths in the customary manner (as a suspension needing resolution).[citation needed]
The ii–V–I cadence Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:II V9 I.MID; the fourth-suspension or sus chord Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:II V9sus
I.MID
Bebop brought an aesthetic change to modern jazz: the chords which before had a relative identity (as major and minor, dominant, etc.) gave way to block transpositions, with a fleeting, smooth flowing tonality, having the colours of chords blurred and strongly ambiguous. A prevalent example for this is the beloved ii-V-I cadence of modern jazz.[citation needed]
In the figure to the right, a traditional cadence is contrasted with a cadence where a substitution has been made in one of the inner voices. The
inner voice still exhibits normal voice leading but within the extended harmony of jazz. The multiplicity of possibilities available can be used as a framework for improvisation. In addition, compositions of this time often had a frantic tempo, allowing more leeway in the harmony of fleeting chords (because they are not sounding for very long). Quartal harmony was employed throughout the jazz of the 1940s.[citation needed]
A typical hard bop brass part, from Horace Silver's "Señor Blues"
The hard bop of the 1950s made new applications of quartal harmony accessible to jazz.[citation needed]
Quintet writing in which two brass instruments (commonly trumpet and
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saxophone) may proceed in fourths, while the piano (as a uniquely harmonic instrument) lays down chords, but sparsely, only hinting at the intended harmony. This style of writing, in contrast with that of the previous decade, preferred a moderate tempo. Thin-sounding unison bebop horn sections occur frequently, but these are balanced by bouts of very refined polyphony such as is found in cool jazz.
The "So What" chord uses three intervals of a fourth.
On his watershed record Kind of Blue, Miles Davis with pianist Bill Evans used a chord consisting of three perfect fourth intervals and a major third on the composition "So What". This particular voicing is sometimes referred to as a So What chord, and can be analyzed (without regard for added sixths, ninths, etc.) as a minor seventh with the root on the bottom, or as a major seventh with the third on the bottom (Levine 1989, 97).
From the outset of the 1960s, the employment of quartal possibilities had become so familiar that the musician now felt the fourth chord existed as a separate entity, self standing and free of any need to resolve. The pioneering of quartal writing in later jazz
and rock, like the pianist McCoy Tyner's work with saxophonist John Coltrane's "classic quartet", was influential throughout this epoch. Oliver Nelson was also known for his use of fourth chord voicings (Corozine 2002, 12).
Floyd claims that the "foundation of 'modern quartal harmony'" began in the era when the Charlie Parker–influenced John Coltrane added classically trained pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner to his ensemble (Floyd 2004, 4).
Jazz guitarists cited as using chord voicings using quartal harmony include Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow, Chuck Wayne, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery, however all in a traditional manner, as major 9th, 13th and minor 11th chords (Floyd 2004, 4) (an octave and fourth equals an 11th). Jazz guitarists cited as using modern quartal harmony include Jim Hall (especially Sonny Rollins's The Bridge), George Benson ("Skydive"), Pat Martino, Jack Wilkins ("Windows"), Joe Diorio, Howard Roberts ("Impressions"), Kenny Burrell ("So What"), Wes Montgomery ("Little Sunflower"), Henry Johnson, Russell Malone, Jimmy Bruno, Howard Alden, Paul Bollenback, Mark Whitfield, and Rodney Jones (Floyd 2004, 4).
Quartal harmony was also explored as a possibility under new experimental scale models as they were "discovered"
by jazz.[citation needed] Musicians began to work extensively with the so-called church modes of old European music, and they became firmly situated in their compositional process. Jazz was well-suited to incorporate the medieval use of fourths to thicken lines into its improvisation. The pianists Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea are two musicians well known for their modal experimentation. Around this time, a style known as free jazz also came into being, in which quartal harmony had extensive use due to the wandering nature of its harmony.
Fourths in Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage"[citation needed]
Between these intensive experiments with quartal harmony, the search for new applications for it in jazz was quickly exhausted. Around 1970, quartal harmony had become part of the canon of everyday practice.[citation needed] In jazz, the way chords were built from a scale came to be called voicing, and specifically quartal harmony was referred to as fourth voicing.
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ii-V-I turnaround with fourth voicings: all chords are in fourth voicings Play Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Quartal voicings.mid; They are often ambiguous as, for example, the Dm11 and G9sus chords are
here voiced identically and will thus be distinguished for the listener by the root movement of the bassist (Boyd 1997, 94)
Thus when the m11 and the dominant 7th sus (9sus above) chords in quartal voicings are used together they tend to
"blend into one overall sound" sometimes referred to as modal voicings, and both may be applied where the m11 chord is called for during extended periods such as the entire chorus (Boyd 1997, 95).