Chromaticism

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• The minor mode in major keys (mode mixture)
  • (Shir-Cliff, etc., 1965)

]]. Though these styles/methods continue to (re)incorporate tonality or tonal elements, often the trends which led to these methods were abandoned, such as modulation.

The total chromatic is the collection of all twelve equal tempered pitch classes of the chromatic scale.

[edit] Connotations

Chromaticism is often associated with dissonance, which is commonly held to indicate negative events or feelings.

Susan McClary (1991) argues that chromaticism in operatic and sonata form narratives can often be understood 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, Clement calls the chromaticism in Wagner's Isolde "feminine stink" (Opera, 55-58, from McClary p.185n). However, McClary also points out that the same techniques used in opera to represent madness in women were historically the avante-garde in instrumental music, "In the nineteenth-century symphony, Salome's chromatic daring is what distinguishes truly serious composition of the vanguard from mere cliché-ridden hack work." (p.101)

[edit] See also

• Diatonic and chromatic

[edit] References

• Shir-Cliff, etc. (1965). Chromatic Harmony. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-02-928630-1.
• Cope, David (1997). Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, p.15. New York, New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864737-8.