Whole-tone scale

Classical music#

In 1662, Johann Rudolf Ahle wrote a melody to the lyrics of Franz Joachim Burmeister’s “Es ist genug” (It is enough), beginning it with four notes of the whole-tone scale on the four syllables. Johann Sebastian Bach chose the chorale to end his cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60, set for four parts. The first four measures are shown below. : \new PianoStaff > \new Staff > » Mozart also used the scale in his Musical Joke, for strings and horns. In the 19th century, Russian composers went further with melodic and harmonic possibilities of the scale, often to depict the ominous; examples include the endings of the overtures to Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila and Borodin’s Prince Igor, and the Commander’s theme in Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone Guest. Further examples can be found in the works of Rimsky-Korsakov: the sea king’s music in Sadko and also in Scheherazade. Shown below is the opening theme to Scheherazade, which is “simply a descending whole-tone scale with diatonic trimmings.” Notes in the whole-tone scale are highlighted. : \relative c \set Staff.midiInstrument = #“tuba” \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 4 = 130 \clef bass \key g \major \time 2/2 \once \override NoteHead.color = #red e2 \ff b \override NoteHead.color = #red d~ \times 2/3 d4 c \override NoteHead.color = #black b \override NoteHead.color = #red c2.\startTrillSpan c8. \override NoteHead.color = #black g16\stopTrillSpan \override NoteHead.color = #red ais2\accent\staccato fis\accent\staccato (For some short piano pieces written completely in whole-tone scale, see Nos. 1, 6, and 7 from V.A. Rebikov’s Празднество (Une fête), Op. 38, from 1907.) H. C. Colles names as the “childhood of the whole-tone scale” the music of Berlioz and Schubert in France and Austria and then Russians Glinka and Dargomyzhsky. Claude Debussy, who had been influenced by Russians, along with other impressionist composers made extensive use of whole-tone scales. Voiles, the second piece in Debussy’s first book of Préludes, is almost entirely within one whole-tone scale. The opening measures are shown below. : \new PianoStaff 8–(\markup \dynamic p \italic “très doux” 32 8..\ 32 4)> r4! 8–~(\markup \dynamic p 32> ! 4~_\markup \italic “più” \dynamic p 16> )! » \new Staff > » Janáček’s use of the scale in the bracing opening to the second movement of his Sinfonietta is, to quote William W. Austin, “utterly different”. Austin writes, “Janáček’s free chromaticism never loses touch with a diatonic scale for long. Though the whole-tone scale is prominent in much of his music after 1905 when he encountered Debussy, it serves simply to fit the motifs over augmented chords. The same motifs return from the whole-tone to the diatonic scale without emphasizing the contrast.” The first measures of the second movement of Sinfonietta are shown below. Giacomo Puccini used whole-tone scales as well as pentatonic scales in his 1904 opera Madama Butterfly to imitate east Asian music styles. The first of Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs opens with a whole-tone passage both in the orchestral accompaniment and in the vocal line that enters a bar later. Berg also quotes the Bach chorale setting referred to above in his Violin Concerto. The last four notes of the 12-tone row Berg used are B, C, E and F, which, together with the first note, G, comprise five of the six notes of the scale.) Béla Bartók also uses whole-tone scales in his fifth string quartet. Ferruccio Busoni used the whole-tone scale in the right hand part of the “Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esercizio” of his An die Jugend, and Franz Liszt had used the technique as early as 1831, in the Grande Fantaisie sur La clochette.

Jazz#

Some early instances of the use of the scale in jazz writing can be found in Bix Beiderbecke’s “In a Mist” (1928) and Don Redman’s “Chant of the Weed” (1931). In 1958, Gil Evans recorded an arrangement that gives striking coloration to the “abrupt whole-tone lines” of Redman’s original. Wayne Shorter’s composition “JuJu” (1965), features heavy use of the whole-tone scale, and John Coltrane’s “One Down, One Up” (1965), is built on two augmented chords arranged in the same simple structure as his earlier tune “Impressions”. However, these are only the most overt examples of the use of this scale in jazz. A vast number of jazz tunes, including many standards, use augmented chords and their corresponding scales as well, usually to create tension in turnarounds or as a substitute for a dominant seventh chord. For instance a G 7 augmented 5th dominant chord in which G altered scale tones would work before resolving to C 7 , a tritone substitution chord such as D 9 or D 711 is often used in which D/G whole-tone scale tones will work, the sharpened 11th degree being a G and the flattened 7th being a C, the enharmonic equivalent of B, the major third in the G dominant chord. Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk are two pianists who used the whole-tone scale extensively and creatively. Monk’s “Four in One” (1948) and “Trinkle-Tinkle” (1952) are fine examples of this. A prominent example of the whole-tone scale that made its way into pop music are bars two and four of the opening of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 song “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”.

Non-Western music#

In Hindustani classical music, the raga Sahera uses the same intervals as the whole-tone scale. Ustad Mehdi Hassan has performed this rāga. Gopriya is the corresponding Carnatic rāgam. If the name whole-tone is used in a broader sense to allow intervals smaller or larger than 200 cents, then divisions of the octave into 5 or 7 evenly-spaced pitches (separated by 240 cents or 171 cents, respectively) may also be referred to as whole-tone scales. Both are common in non-Western music such as Indonesian gamelan .

External links#

• The whole tone scale for piano
• Whole Tone Scale – Analysis
• The Whole Tone Scale and Applications for Jazz Guitar