Whole tone scale
Encyclopedia
In music
, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each note
is separated from its neighbors by the interval
of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic
scales:
The whole tone scale has no leading tone and because all tones are the same distance apart, "no single tone stands out, [and] the scale creates a blurred, indistinct effect". This effect is especially emphasized by the fact that triads
built on such scale tones are augmented
. Indeed, one can play all six tones of a whole tone scale simply with two augmented triads whose roots are a major second apart. Since they are symmetrical
, whole tone scales do not give a strong impression of the tonic
or tonality
.
The composer Olivier Messiaen
called the whole tone scale his first mode of limited transposition
. The composer and music theorist George Perle
calls the whole tone scale interval cycle
2, or C2. Since there are only two possible whole tone scale positions (that is, the whole tone scale can be transposed only once), it is either C20 or C21. For this reason, the whole tone scale is also maximally even
and may be considered a generated collection
.
Due to this symmetry, the hexachord
consisting of the whole-tone scale is not distinct under inversion or more than one transposition. Thus many composers have used one of the "almost whole-tone" hexachords, whose "individual structural differences can be seen to result only from a difference in the 'location,' or placement, of a semitone within the otherwise whole-tone series." Alexander Scriabin
's mystic chord is a primary example, being a whole tone scale with one note raised a semitone, with this alteration allowing for a greater variety of resources through transposition.
, 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; consider the endings of the overture
s to Glinka's
opera Ruslan and Lyudmila and Borodin's
Prince Igor
, the Commander's theme in Dargomyzhsky
's The Stone Guest
, and the sea king's music in Rimsky-Korsakov
's Sadko
. (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 then Russians Glinka and Dargomijsky. Claude Debussy
, who had been influenced by Russians, along with other Impressionist
composer
s made extensive use of whole tone scales. The whole tone scale was also used by Alban Berg
in his Violin Concerto
(the last four notes of the 12-tone row
he used are B, C, E and F, which, together with the first note, G, comprise 5 of the 6 notes of the scale) and by Béla Bartók
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
applied the whole tone scale to parts of the score of his Dante Symphony
.
writing and jazz harmony
. Wayne Shorter
's composition "JuJu
" features heavy use of the whole tone scale, and John Coltrane
's One Down, One Up is built off 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 turnaround
s or as a substitute for a dominant seventh chord. Art Tatum
and Thelonious Monk
are two pianists who used the whole tone scale extensively and creatively.
A prominent example of the whole tone scale that made its way into pop music are bars 3 and 4 of the opening of Stevie Wonder
's song "You Are the Sunshine of My Life
".
Sahera in Hindustani classical music
uses the same intervals as the whole tone scale. Ustad
Mehdi Hassan
has performed this rāga.
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each note
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....
is separated from its neighbors by the interval
Interval (music)
In music theory, an interval is a combination of two notes, or the ratio between their frequencies. Two-note combinations are also called dyads...
of a whole step. There are only two complementary whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic
Hexatonic scale
In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole tone scale, C D E F G A C; the augmented scale, C D E G A B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F A B C; and what some jazz theorists call the "blues scale", C E F F G B...
scales:
The whole tone scale has no leading tone and because all tones are the same distance apart, "no single tone stands out, [and] the scale creates a blurred, indistinct effect". This effect is especially emphasized by the fact that triads
Triad (music)
In music and music theory, a triad is a three-note chord that can be stacked in thirds. Its members, when actually stacked in thirds, from lowest pitched tone to highest, are called:* the Root...
built on such scale tones are augmented
Augmented triad
In music, an augmented triad is a triad, or chord, consisting of two major thirds . The term augmented triad arises from an augmented triad being a three note chord, or triad, whose top note is raised, or augmented...
. Indeed, one can play all six tones of a whole tone scale simply with two augmented triads whose roots are a major second apart. Since they are symmetrical
Symmetric scale
In music, a symmetric scale is a music scale which equally divides the octave. The concept and term appears to have been introduced by Joseph Schillinger and further developed by Nicolas Slonimsky as part of his famous "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns"...
, whole tone scales do not give a strong impression of the tonic
Tonic (music)
In music, the tonic is the first scale degree of the diatonic scale and the tonal center or final resolution tone. The triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord...
or tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
.
The composer Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
called the whole tone scale his first mode of limited transposition
Modes of limited transposition
Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups...
. The composer and music theorist George Perle
George Perle
George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...
calls the whole tone scale interval cycle
Interval cycle
In music, an interval cycle is a collection of pitch classes created from a sequence of the same interval class. In other words a collection of pitches by starting with a certain note and going up by a certain interval until the original note is reached In music, an interval cycle is a collection...
2, or C2. Since there are only two possible whole tone scale positions (that is, the whole tone scale can be transposed only once), it is either C20 or C21. For this reason, the whole tone scale is also maximally even
Maximal evenness
In diatonic set theory maximal evenness is the quality of a collection or scale which for every generic interval there are either one or two consecutive specific intervals, in other words a scale which is "spread out as much as possible." This property was first described by music theorist John...
and may be considered a generated collection
Generated collection
In diatonic set theory, a generated collection is a collection or scale formed by repeatedly adding a constant interval in integer notation, the generator, also known as an interval cycle, around the chromatic circle until a complete collection or scale is formed...
.
Due to this symmetry, the hexachord
Hexachord
In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...
consisting of the whole-tone scale is not distinct under inversion or more than one transposition. Thus many composers have used one of the "almost whole-tone" hexachords, whose "individual structural differences can be seen to result only from a difference in the 'location,' or placement, of a semitone within the otherwise whole-tone series." Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
's mystic chord is a primary example, being a whole tone scale with one note raised a semitone, with this alteration allowing for a greater variety of resources through transposition.
Classical music
Use of the melodic whole tone scale can be traced at least as far back as MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, in his Musical Joke
A Musical Joke
A Musical Joke K. 522, is a composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the composer entered it in his Verzeichnis aller meiner Werke on June 14, 1787...
, 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; consider the endings of the overture
Overture
Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...
s to Glinka's
Mikhail Glinka
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka , was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music...
opera Ruslan and Lyudmila and Borodin's
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
, the Commander's theme in Dargomyzhsky
Alexander Dargomyzhsky
Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky was a 19th century Russian composer. He bridged the gap in Russian opera composition between Mikhail Glinka and the later generation of The Five and Tchaikovsky....
's The Stone Guest
The Stone Guest (Dargomyzhsky)
The Stone Guest is an opera in three acts by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. The libretto was taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's like-named play in blank verse , with slight changes in wording and the interpolation of two songs indicated in the play...
, and the sea king's music in Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...
's Sadko
Sadko (opera)
Sadko is an opera in seven scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, with assistance from Vladimir Belsky, Vladimir Stasov, and others. Rimsky-Korsakov was first inspired by the bylina of Sadko in 1867, when he completed a tone poem on the subject, his Op. 5...
. (For some short piano pieces written completely in whole-tone scale, see nos. 1, 6, and 7 from V.A. Rebikov's
Vladimir Rebikov
Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov was a late romantic 20th century Russian composer and pianist.-Biography:Rebikov began studying the piano with his mother. His sisters also were pianists. He graduated from the Moscow University faculty of philology. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with N....
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 then Russians Glinka and Dargomijsky. Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, who had been influenced by Russians, along with other Impressionist
Impressionist music
Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s made extensive use of whole tone scales. The whole tone scale was also used by Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
in his Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Berg)
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935 . It is probably Berg's best-known and most frequently performed instrumental piece.-Conception and composition:...
(the last four notes of the 12-tone row
Tone row
In music, a tone row or note row , also series and set, refers to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometimes found.-History and usage:Tone rows are the basis of...
he used are B, C, E and F, which, together with the first note, G, comprise 5 of the 6 notes of the scale) and by Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
in his Fifth String Quartet
String Quartet No. 5 (Bartók)
The String Quartet No. 5 Sz. 102, BB 110 by Béla Bartók was written between August 6 and September 6, 1934.The work is in five movements:#Allegro#Adagio molto#Scherzo: alla bulgarese#Andante#Finale: Allegro vivace...
. Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
used the whole tone scale in the right hand part of the "Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esercizio" of his An die Jugend
An die Jugend
An die Jugend is a sequence of pieces of classical music for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni.- Plan of the work :The collection was written June–August 1909 and consists of four volumes, the last with an epilogue. It was published later in the same year by Zimmermann of Leipzig under four separate...
, and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
applied the whole tone scale to parts of the score of his Dante Symphony
Dante Symphony
A Symphony to Dante's Divine Comedy, S.109, or simply the "Dante Symphony", is a program symphony composed by Franz Liszt. Written in the high romantic style, it is based on Dante Alighieri's journey through Hell and Purgatory, as depicted in The Divine Comedy...
.
Jazz harmony
The scale is also used extensively in modern jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
writing and jazz harmony
Jazz harmony
Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of how chords are used in jazz music. Jazz bears certain similarities to other practices in the tradition of Western harmony, such as many chord progressions, and the incorporation of the major and minor scales as a basis for chordal construction, but...
. Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...
's composition "JuJu
JuJu (Wayne Shorter album)
JuJu is an album by Wayne Shorter, recorded and released on Blue Note in 1964, issued as BLP 4182 and BST 84182.The album shows the strong influence of John Coltrane, with whom Shorter had studied as an undergraduate, and whose style is reflected here both in performance and composition...
" features heavy use of the whole tone scale, and John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
's One Down, One Up is built off 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 turnaround
Turnaround (music)
In jazz, a turnaround is a passage at the end of a section which leads to the next section. This next section is most often the repetition of the previous section or the entire piece or song...
s or as a substitute for a dominant seventh chord. Art Tatum
Art Tatum
Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...
and Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
are two pianists who used the whole tone scale extensively and creatively.
A prominent example of the whole tone scale that made its way into pop music are bars 3 and 4 of the opening of Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
's song "You Are the Sunshine of My Life
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
"You Are the Sunshine of My Life" is a 1973 pop single released by Stevie Wonder. The song became Wonder's third number-one pop single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and his first number one on the easy listening chart. It won Wonder a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. This song was...
".
Non-western music
The rāgaRaga
A raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made...
Sahera in Hindustani classical music
Hindustani classical music
Hindustani classical music is the Hindustani or North Indian style of Indian classical music found throughout the northern Indian subcontinent. The style is sometimes called North Indian Classical Music or Shāstriya Sangeet...
uses the same intervals as the whole tone scale. Ustad
Ustad
Ustad is an Arabized Persian word is a honorific title for a Muslim man in South Asia. The title precedes the name and is usually used for well regarded teachers and artists, most often musicians. It is applied and used via informal social agreement. It is abbreviated as ut. or ud.-References:*...
Mehdi Hassan
Mehdi Hassan
Mehdi Hassan is a Pakistani ghazal singer and a former playback singer for Lollywood. He is famously known as the 'King of ghazal' . He has ruled the Pakistan film industry along with Ahmed Rushdi...
has performed this rāga.
As pertaining to Pythagoras
Pythagoras' theory was that all the planets had "tones" between them: From the sphere of the earth to the sphere of the moon, one tone; from the sphere of the moon to that of Mercury, one half-tone; from Mercury to Venus, one-half; from Venus to the sun, one and one-half tones; from the sun to Mars, one tone; from Mars to Jupiter, one-half tone; from Jupiter to Saturn, one-half tone; from Saturn to the fixed stars, one-half tone. The sum of these intervals equals the six whole tones of the octave. http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta19.htm. Based on some views, this may have been just because Pythagoras wanted it to.See also
- List of pieces which use the whole tone scale
- Pythagorean intervalPythagorean intervalIn musical tuning theory, a Pythagorean interval is a musical interval with frequency ratio equal to a power of two divided by a power of three, or vice versa...
- List of meantone intervals
- Diminished-whole tone scale