In music, a hexachord (also hexachordon) is a six-Musical note series, as exhibited in a musical scale (hexatonic scale or hexad) or tone row. The term was adopted in this sense during the Middle Ages and adapted in the 20th century in Milton Babbitt's serialism. The word is taken from the , compounded from ἕξ ( hex, six) and χορδή ( chordē, string of, whence "note"), and was also the term used in music theory up to the 18th century for the interval of a sixth ("hexachord major" being the major sixth and "hexachord minor" the minor sixth).[William Holder, A Treatise of the Natural Grounds and Principles of Harmony (London: Printed by J. Heptinstall, for John Carr, at the Middle-Temple-Gate, in Fleet-Street, 1694): 192. Facsimile reprint, New York: Broude Brothers, 1967.][Ephraim Chambers, , 2 vols. (London: Printed for J. and J. Knapton and, 1728): 1, part 2:247.]
Middle Ages
The hexachord as a mnemonic device was first described by Guido of Arezzo, in his
Epistola de ignoto cantu.
[Guido d'Arezzo, "Epistola de ignotu cantu ca.", abridged translation by Oliver Strink in Source Readings in Music History, selected and annotated by Oliver Strunk, 5 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965): 1:121–25. Latin test in Martin Gerbert, Scriptores ecclesistici de musica sacra potissimum, 3 vols. (St. Blasien, 1784), 2:43–46, 50. See also Clause V. Palisca, "Introduction" to Guido's Micrologus, in Hucbald, Guido, and John on Music: Three Medieval Treatises, translated by Warren Babb, edited, with introductions by Claude V. Palisca, index of chants by Alejandro Enrique Planchart, 49–56, Music Theory Translation Series 3 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978): esp. 49–50. .] In each hexachord, all adjacent pitches are a
whole tone apart, except for the middle two, which are separated by a
semitone. These six pitches are named
ut,
re,
mi,
fa,
sol, and
la, with the semitone between
mi and
fa. These six names are derived from the first syllable of each half-verse of the first stanza of the 8th-century Vesper hymn
Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris /
Mira gestorum
famuli tuorum, etc.
[Guido d'Arezzo, "Epistola de ignotu cantu ca.", abridged translation by Oliver Strink in Source Readings in Music History, selected and annotated by Oliver Strunk, 5 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965): 1:121–25. Citation on p. 124.] Melodies with a range wider than a major sixth required the device of mutation to a new hexachord. For example, the hexachord beginning on C and rising to A, named
hexachordum naturale, has its only semitone between the notes E and F, and stops short of the note B or B. A melody moving a semitone higher than
la (namely, from A to the B above) required changing the
la to
mi, so that the required B becomes
fa. Because B was named by the "soft" or rounded letter B, the hexachord with this note in it was called the
hexachordum molle (soft hexachord). Similarly, the hexachord with
mi and
fa expressed by the notes B and C was called the
hexachordum durum (hard hexachord), because the B was represented by a squared-off, or "hard" B. Starting in the 14th century, these three hexachords were extended in order to accommodate the increasing use of signed accidentals on other notes.
[Jehoash Hirshberg, "Hexachord", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).]
The introduction of these new notes was principally a product of polyphony, which required the placing of a perfect fifth not only above the old note B, but also below its newly created variant, this entailing, as a result of the "original sin" committed by the well-meant innovation B, the introduction of the still newer respective notes F and E, with as consequences of these last C and A, and so on. The new notes, being outside the gamut of those ordinarily available, had to be "imagined", or "feigned" (it was long forbidden to write them), and for this reason music containing them was called musica ficta or musica falsa.[Andrew Hughes and Edith Gerson-Kiwi, "Solmization solfatio,", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001): §4, "Expansion of the Hexachord System".]
20th century
Allen Forte in
The Structure of Atonal Music redefines the term
hexachord to mean what other theorists (notably
Howard Hanson in his
Harmonic Materials of Modern Music: Resources of the Tempered Scale) mean by the term
hexad, a six-note pitch collection which is not necessarily a contiguous segment of a scale or a tone row.
David Lewin used the term in this sense as early as 1959.
[David Lewin, "Re: Intervallic Relations Between Two Collections of Notes", Journal of Music Theory 3, no. 2 (November 1959): 298–301, citation on 300.] Carlton Gamer uses both terms interchangeably.
[Carlton Gamer, "Some Combinational Resources of Equal-Tempered Systems", Journal of Music Theory 11, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 32–59. The term "hexad" appears just once, in a table on p. 37; the word "hexachord" also occurs once, on p. 41.]
See also
Sources
Further reading
-
Rahn, John. 1980. Basic Atonal Theory. Longman Music Series. New York and London: Longman Inc. .
-
Roeder, John. "Set (ii)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001.
External links
