Diatonic and chromatic

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“Chromatic” redirects here. For other uses, see Chromatic (disambiguation).

Diatonic and chromatic are important terms in Western music theory. They are applied first of all to scales, but are often used in characterising intervals, chords, general musical styles, kinds of harmony, etc. When treated as an opposing pair, the terms are especially used in discourse concerning common practice music – the tonal music that dominated in the West from about 1600 to about 1900.

These terms may mean different things in different contexts; but in general, diatonic refers to musical elements derived from a seven-note scale such as the major scale and the church modes, which consist of whole tones and semitones, whereas chromatic refers to structures derived from the chromatic scale, which consists of all semitones.


Contents

[edit] Greek genus

Main article: Tetrachord

In ancient Greece tunings were classified as diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic. A diatonic tetrachord comprised, in descending order, two whole tones and a semitone, such as A G F E. In the chromatic tetrachord the second string (as G) was lowered until the two lower intervals in the tetrachord were equal, making the pitches A Gb F E (roughly).[1]

[edit] Medieval coloration

The term cromatico (Italian) was occasionally used in the Medieval and Renaissance periods to refer to coloration of certain notes (i.e. written in solid red or black ink). In works of the Ars Nova from the 14th century, this was used to indicate a change in duration. It was discontinued in the 15th century as the use of open white noteheads came into use (see white mensural notation).[2][3]. Similarly, in the 16th century, notation in a 4/4 time signature was refered to as "chromatic" notation because of its abundance of "colored in" black notes, as opposed to the open white notes of the more common 2/2 metre.[4] These uses for the word have no relationship to the modern meaning of "chromatic".

[edit] Renaissance chromaticism

In the 16th century the term also began to be used in a way similar to the modern usage. For instance Orlando Lasso's Prophetiae Sibyllarum opens with a prologue proclaiming, "these chromatic songs,[5] heard in modulation, are those in which the mysteries of the Sibyls are sung, intrepidly," which here takes its modern meaning referring to the frequent change of key and use of chromatic intervals in the work. (The Prophetiae belonged to an experimental musical movement of the time, called Musica reservata). This usage comes from a renewed interest in the Greek genera, especially its chromatic tetrachord, notably by the influential theorist Nicola Vicentino in his treatise on ancient and modern practice, 1555.[6]

[edit] Diatonic scales

Main article: Diatonic scale

[edit] Background

Medieval theorists defined scales in terms of the Greek tetrachords. The gamut was the series of pitches from which all the Medieval "scales" (or modes, strictly) are derived, and it may be thought of as constructed from diatonic tetrachords.

In its most strict definition, therefore, a diatonic scale is one that may be derived from the pitches represented in successive white keys of the piano (or a transposition thereof): the modern equivalent of the Medieval gamut.[7] This would include the major scale, the natural minor scale (same as the descending form of the melodic minor), and the old Ecclesiastical church modes.

[edit] Modern meanings of "diatonic scale"

Given the background presented above, and moving now to address usages in the Common Practice Period exclusively:

  • A majority of theorists, especially musicologists and others in academia, consistently exclude the other variants of the minor scale – the melodic minor (ascending form) and the harmonic minor – as diatonic, since these cannot be derived as transpositions of the white notes of the piano. Among such theorists there is no agreed general term that encompasses the major and all forms of the minor scale.
  • Other theorists, especially some who are more oriented towards practical musicianship and performance, consistently include those scales as "diatonic" scales. For this minority, every Western scale in standard use is either diatonic (the major, and all forms of the minor) or chromatic.[8]
  • Regrettably, still other theorists mix these two meanings of diatonic (and conversely for chromatic), and this may lead to confusions and misconceptions. Sometimes, though not always, the context makes it clear which meaning is intended.

For works employing each of these usages (for scales, and derived usages for intervals, etc.), see the list of sources, below.

[edit] Chromatic scale

Main article: Chromatic scale

A chromatic scale consists of some transposition of the pitches represented by all the white and black keys of the piano, all a semitone apart. A chromatic scale can start on any note in that series of semitones.

[edit] Diatonic and chromatic intervals, chords, and harmony

[edit] Intervals

[edit] With equal temperament assumed

The diatonic intervals are usually understood as those between some pair of notes both drawn from the same diatonic scale. Intervals that cannot be so derived are, by this way of thinking, called chromatic intervals. Because diatonic scale is itself ambiguous (see above), this way of distinguishing intervals is also ambiguous.[9]

[edit] Beyond equal temperament

In the context of temperament, tuning systems other than equal temperament that are derived from a cycle of fifths make a tuning distinction between intervals that are notated diatonically between notes of the same diatonic scale, and chromatically between notes that are not. These systems include Pythagorean tuning (dating back as far as 3500 BCE[10]), and meantone temperament (common through the Renaissance and through the Baroque periods), and under these systems the cycle of fifths isn't circular in the sense that a pitch at one end of the cycle (e.g. G♯) is not tuned the same as the enharmonic equivalent at its other end (A♭). This broken cycle causes intervals that cross the break to be written as augmented or diminished chromatic intervals. In meantone temperament, for instance, chromatic semitones (C-C♯) are smaller than diatonic semitones (C-D♭).[11]

[edit] Chords

Diatonic chords are generally understood as those that are built using only notes from the same diatonic scale, all others then being considered chromatic chords. But this definition too is ambiguous, given the ambiguity of diatonic scale. For some, the augmented triad E♭-G-B♮ is diatonic, because it exists in C harmonic minor. For others, it is diatonic only relatively: it is diatonic "to" C harmonic minor, or has a "diatonic occurrence" in C harmonic minor. For still others, who do not count harmonic minor scales as diatonic, the triad E♭-G-B♮ is never diatonic. To give another example, the diminished seventh chord (which often has the leading note of a harmonic minor scale as its lowest note and the sixth degree as its highest note) is sometimes accepted as a diatonic chord (at least when it is constructed like that in the harmonic minor); but by many theorists it is never considered diatonic.

There are other meanings given to the term diatonic chord, but that just given is the most common.

[edit] Harmony

The word diatonic is also applied inconsistently to harmony:

  • Often musicians use it to mean any kind of harmony inside the major–minor system of common practice. When diatonic harmony is used in this sense, the supposed term chromatic harmony means little, because chromatic chords are also used in that system.
  • At other times, especially in textbooks and syllabuses for musical composition or music theory, diatonic harmony means harmony that uses only "diatonic chords". (Often, even if the text uses a different and incompatible classification for chords, the content of diatonic harmony will include such harmonic resources as diminished sevenths on the leading note – possibly even in major keys.) According to this usage, chromatic harmony is then harmony that extends the available resources to include chromatic chords: the augmented sixth chords, the Neapolitan sixth, chromatic seventh chords, etc.[12]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Tuning and Temperament, A Historical Survey, J. Murray Barbour, 2004 (reprint of 1972 edition), ISBN 0-486-43406-0. These meanings in Greek theory are the ultimate source of the meanings of the words today, but through a great deal of modification and confusion in Medieval times. Diatonic is ultimately from the Greek διατονικός (diatonikós), itself from διάτονος (diátonos), which may mean (as OED claims) "through the tones" (taking τόνος, tónos, to mean interval of a tone), or perhaps stretched out (as recorded in Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon). This second interpretation would be justified by consideration of the pitches in the diatonic tetrachord, which are more equally distributed than in the chromatic and enharmonic tetrachords. (It is perhaps also sounder on linguistic morphological grounds; see also Genus_(music), and Merriam-Webster Online.) Chromatic is from Greek χρωματικός (khrōmatikós), itself from χρῶμα (khrṓma), which means complexion, hence color – or, specifically as a musical term, a modification of the simplest music (see Liddell and Scott's Greek lexicon).
  2. ^ Parrish, Carl, The Notation of Medieval Music, Pendragon, New York, 1978, pp. 147-147.
  3. ^ Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., "Chromatic"
  4. ^ Grout, Donald J, and Palisca, Claude, A History of Western Music, 6th ed., Norton, New York, 2001. pp. 188-190.
  5. ^ Rendered by many as Carmina chromatico, though this is incorrect Latin; the title is given as Carmina chromatica (which is plural of Latin carmen chromaticum) in New Grove Online. The entire passage is relevant to present points in our article: "Each tetrachord or hexachord is a diatonic entity, containing one diatonic semitone; but the tight overlapping of hexachordal segments – some as small as an isolated coniuncta – to produce successive or closely adjacent semitones did not necessarily compromise their diatonic status. The tenor of Willaert's so-called chromatic duo is entirely diatonic in its progressions (Bent, 1984), as are Lowinsky's examples of ‘secret chromatic art’ (Lowinsky, 1946) and indeed almost the entire repertory. True chromatic progressions (e.g. F–F♯–G) are occasionally allowed in theory (Marchetto, GerbertS, iii, 82–3) and prescribed in manuscript sources. Except where a melodic chromatic interval is introduced in the interests of vertical perfection (e.g. Old Hall, no. 101; see ex. 2d), musica ficta is by nature diatonic. / Even music liberally provided with notated sharps is not necessarily chromatic; this has been called ‘accidentalism’. Increasingly explicit use of accidentals and explicit degree-inflection culminates in the madrigals of Marenzio and Gesualdo, which are remote from medieval traditions of unspecified inflection, and co-exists in the 16th century both with older hexachordal practices and with occasional true melodic chromaticism. It is the small number of chromatic intervals in Lassus's Sibylline Prophecies (Carmina chromatica), for example, that determine its chromatic status, not the large number of sharps that give it ‘chromatic’ colouring according to looser modern usage" (New Grove Online, "Musica Ficta", I, ii).
  6. ^ Grout et al., 2001, p. 188
  7. ^ For simplicity, throughout this article equal temperament tuning is assumed unless otherwise noted.
  8. ^ A few exclude only the harmonic minor as diatonic, and accept the ascending melodic, because it comprises only tones and semitones, or because it has all of its parts analysable as tetrachords in some way or other.
  9. ^ There are several other understandings of the terms diatonic interval and chromatic interval, some of which define all augmented and diminished intervals as chromatic, even though these occur in scales that everyone accepts as diatonic. (For example, the diminished fifth formed by B and F, which occurs in C major.) There are even some theorists who have defined all minor intervals as chromatic.
  10. ^ West, M.L., "The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts", Music & Letters, Vol. 75, no. 2., May, 1994, pp. 161-179
  11. ^ Helmholtz, Hermann, trans. Alexander Ellis, On the Sensations of Tone, Dover, New York, 1954. pp. 433-435 and 546-548
  12. ^ Some of these are chords "borrowed" from a key other than the prevailing key of a piece; but some are not: they are derivable only by chromatic alteration.

[edit] Published sources for "diatonic", in Common Practice music

Notes:

  • The sources cited below are sorted into three groups, depending on what they say about the term diatonic:
  • those that explicitly or implicitly exclude the harmonic and melodic minors, along with the consequences for intervals, etc.;
  • those that include the harmonic and melodic minors, with consequences; and
  • those that are ambiguous, inconsistent, or anomalous.
  • In cited text below, relevant portions have been highlighted in bold, which has been added for emphasis.

[edit] Diatonic excludes the harmonic and melodic minor scales

1. The Oxford Companion to Music (some recent editions)
Scale [...] 3. Diatonic Scale: [...] The sixth and seventh degrees of the minor scale are unstable and result in two forms, neither of them diatonic: the harmonic minor, with the characteristic interval of an augmented 2nd; and the melodic minor[...] p. 1106, ISBN: 0198662122
[But see current online edition, and older edition (same as the first edition), below in other categories.]
2. Grove Music Online (see p. 295 in the print version)
Diatonic (from Gk. dia tonos: ‘proceeding by whole tones’).
Based on or derivable from an octave of seven notes in a particular configuration, as opposed to chromatic and other forms of scale. A seven-note scale is said to be diatonic when its octave span is filled by five tones and two semitones, with the semitones maximally separated, for example the major scale (T–T–S–T–T–T–S). The natural minor scale and the church modes (see Mode) are also diatonic.
[But see the same source, Grove Music Online, below also.]
3. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Difficult Words
Diatonic: (of a musical scale, interval, etc.) involving only notes proper to the prevailing key without chromatic alteration.

[edit] Diatonic includes the harmonic and melodic minor scales

1. Oxford Companion to Music, ed. Percy Scholes, "Diatonic and chromatic", 9th edition, 1955
Diatonic and Chromatic: [...]The diatonic scales are the major and minor, made up of tones and semitones (in the case of the harmonic minor scale, also an augmented second), as distinct from the chromatic[...]
2. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music (Online [1]; current print edition is the same)
For the older European scales, used in the Church's plainsong and in folk song, see modes. Two of these ancient modes remained in use by composers, when the other 10 were almost abandoned, and these are our major and minor scales – the latter, however, subject to some variations in its 6th and 7th notes. Taking C as the keynote these scales (which have provided the chief material of music from about AD 1600 to 1900) run as follows: [than the first figure in the article, showing the major scale on C, then the harmonic minor on C, then the ascending and descending melodic on C; text continues immediately with:] The major and minor scales are spoken of as DIATONIC SCALES, as distinct from a scale using nothing but semitones, which is the CHROMATIC SCALE, [...]
3. Music Notation and Terminology, Gehrkens, Karl Wilson, 1882-1975
p. 79. There are three general classes of scales extant at the present time, viz.: (1) Diatonic; (2) Chromatic; (3) Whole-tone.
p. 80. The word diatonic means "through the tones" (i.e., through the tones of the key), and is applied to both major and minor scales of our modern tonality system. In general a diatonic scale may be defined as one which proceeds by half-steps and whole-steps. There is, however, one exception to this principle, viz., in the progression six to seven in the harmonic minor scale, which is of course a step-and-a-half.

[edit] Diatonic used vaguely, inconsistently, or anomalously

1. Grove Music Online
Diatonic (same article as cited above) [...] An interval is said to be diatonic if it is available within a diatonic scale. The following intervals and their compounds are all diatonic: minor 2nd (S), major 2nd (T), minor 3rd (TS), major 3rd (TT), perfect 4th (TTS), perfect 5th (TTST), minor 6th (STTTS), major 6th (TTSTT), minor 7th (TSTTTS), major 7th (TTSTTT) and the octave itself. The tritone, in theory diatonic according to this definition, has traditionally been regarded as the alteration of a perfect interval, and hence chromatic; it may be either a semitone more than a perfect 4th (augmented 4th: TTT) or a semitone less than a perfect 5th (diminished 5th: STTS).
2. Grove Music Online
Minor (i). (1) The name given to a diatonic scale whose octave, in its natural form, is built of the following ascending sequence, in which T stands for a tone and S for a semitone: T–S–T–T–S–T–T). The note chosen to begin the sequence, called the key note, also becomes part of the name of the scale; a D minor scale, for instance, consists of the notes D–E–F–G–A–B–C–D. In practice, however, some notes of the scale are altered chromatically to help impart a sense of direction to the melody. The harmonic minor scale has a raised seventh, in accordance with the need for a major triad on the fifth step (the Dominant chord). The melodic minor scale has a raised sixth and a raised seventh when it is ascending, borrowing the leading-note function of the seventh step from the major scale; in descending, though, it is the same as the natural minor scale.
3. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christenson, 2004
[Records different usages by different major theorists.]
4. Encyclopedia Britannica ([2] Print version is the same.) Also Concise Britannica, "Diatonic" ([3] Print version is the same.)
The “harmonic” minor that results is, strictly speaking, no longer a diatonic scale, unlike “melodic” minor, which simply borrows its upper tetrachord from the parallel major, i.e., the major scale beginning and ending on the same pitch.
[This accepts the ascending melodic as diatonic.]
5. Elementary Training for Musicians (Hindemith, Paul - pg. 58, Second Edition, 1949)
Diatonic = consisting of whole and half-tone steps.
[This definition fails to exclude the ascending melodic as diatonic.]
6. Oxford Companion to Music (Online [4]; current print edition is the same)
diatonic (from Gk. dia tonikos, ‘at intervals of a tone’). In the major–minor tonal system, a diatonic feature – which may be a single note, an interval, a chord, or an extended passage of music – is one that uses exclusively notes belonging to one key. In practice, it can be said to use a particular scale, but only with the proviso that the alternative submediants and leading notes of harmonic and melodic minor allow up to nine diatonic notes, compared with the seven available in a major scale.
[The exact intention with regard to classification of the harmonic and melodic minor scales is unclear, and likely to be inconsistent.]
7. Theory of Harmony (Schoenberg, Arnold, p. 32, Based on Third Edition, 1983)
In the seven chords that we build on the seven tones of the major scale we use no tones other than these same seven - the tones of the scale, the diatonic tones.
[Harmonic and melodic minor scales aren't necessarily excluded. Not very clear.]

[edit] See also

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