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Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic scale pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses only seven different notes, rather than the twelve available on a standard piano keyboard. Music is chromatic when it uses more than just these seven notes.
is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism and modality (the major scale and minor scale, or "white key", scales). Chromatic elements are considered, "elaborations of or substitutions for diatonic scale members".Matthew Brown; Schenker, "The Diatonic and the Chromatic in Schenker's "Theory of Harmonic Relations", Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 1–33, citation on p. 1.
The following timeline is abbreviated from its presentation by Benward & Saker:Benward & Saker (2003), pp. 42–43.
As tonality began to expand during the last half of the nineteenth century, with new combinations of chords, keys and harmonies being tried, the chromatic scale and chromaticism became more widely used, especially in the works of Richard Wagner, such as the opera "Tristan und Isolde". Increased chromaticism is often cited as one of the main causes or signs of the "breakdown" of tonality, in the form of increased importance or use of:
As tonal harmony continued to widen and even break down, the chromatic scale became the basis of modern music written using the twelve-tone technique, a tone row being a specific ordering or series of the chromatic scale, and later serialism. Though these styles/methods continue to (re)incorporate tonality or tonal elements, often the trends that led to these methods were abandoned, such as modulation.
The total chromatic is the collection of all twelve equally tempered of the chromatic scale.
List of chromatic chords:
Other types of chromaticity:
A chromatic scale is one which proceeds entirely by semitones, so dividing the octave into twelve equal steps of one semitone each.
Linear chromaticism is used in jazz: "All improvised lines ... will include non-harmonic, chromatic notes." Similar to in the bebop scale this may be the result of metric issues, or simply the desire to use a portion of the chromatic scaleJerry Coker (1997). Elements of the Jazz Language for the Developing Improvisor, p. 81. .
For example, in the key of C major, the following chords (all diatonic) are naturally built on each degree of the scale:
However, a number of other chords may also be built on the degrees of the scale, and some of these are chromatic. Examples:
A line cliché is any chromatic line that moves against a stationary chord. There are many different types of line clichés—most often in the root, fifth or seventh—but there are two named line clichés. The major line cliché moves from the fifth of the chord to the sixth, then back to the fifth. Assuming the starting chord is the tonic, the simplest form of the major line cliché forms a I–I+–vi–I+ progression. The minor line cliché moves down from the root to the major seventh, to the minor seventh, and can continue until the fifth.
From the late 16th century onward, chromaticism has come to symbolize intense emotional expression in music. Pierre Boulez (1986, p. 254) speaks of a long established "dualism" in Western European harmonic language: "the diatonic on the one hand and the chromatic on the other as in the time of Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo whose madrigals provide many examples and employ virtually the same symbolism. The chromatic symbolizing darkness doubt and grief and the diatonic light, affirmation and joy—this imagery has hardly changed for three centuries."Boulez, P. (1986) Orientations, London. Faber. When an interviewer asked Igor Stravinsky (1959, p. 243) if he really believed in an innate connection between "pathos" and chromaticism, the composer replied: "Of course not; the association is entirely due to convention."Stravinsky, I. and Craft, R. (1959) Memories and Commentaries. London, Faber and Faber, p. 243. Nevertheless, the convention is a powerful one and the emotional associations evoked by chromaticism have endured and indeed strengthened over the years. To quote Cooke (1959, p. 54) "Ever since about 1850—since doubts have been cast, in intellectual circles, on the possibility, or even the desirability, of basing one's life on the concept of personal happiness—chromaticism has brought more and more painful tensions into our art-music, and finally eroded the major system and with it the whole system of tonality."Cooke, D. The Language of Music, London and New York: Oxford University Press, p. 54.
Examples of descending chromatic melodic lines that would seem to convey highly charged feeling can be found in:
In the 16th century the repeated melodic semitone became associated with weeping, see: chromatic fourth, lament bass, and pianto.
Susan McClary (1991)McClary, Suzan (1991). Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 63-65 argues that chromaticism in and sonata form narratology can be chosen to be understood through a Marxist narrative as the "Other", racial, sexual, class or otherwise, to diatonicism's "male" self, whether through modulation, as to the secondary key area, or other means. For instance, Catherine Clément calls the chromaticism in Wagner's Isolde "feminine stink"."Opera", 55–58, from McClary (1991) p. 185n16 However, McClary also contradicts herself saying that the same techniques used in opera to represent madness in women were historically highly prized in avant-garde instrumental music, "In the nineteenth-century symphony, Salomes chromatic daring is what distinguishes truly serious composition of the vanguard from mere cliché-ridden hack work." (p. 101)
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