Lament bass
In music, the lament bass is a ground bass, built from a descending perfect fourth from tonic to dominant, with each step harmonized.[1] The diatonic version is the upper tetrachord from the natural minor scale,[2] known as the Phrygian tetrachord, while the chromatic version, the chromatic fourth, has all semitones filled in. It is often used in music to denote tragedy or sorrow.[3]
However, "A common misperception exists that the 'lament bass' of Venetian opera became so prevalent that it immediately swept away all other possible affective associations with this bass pattern...To cite but one example, Peter Holman, writing about Henry Purcell, once characterized the minor tetrachord as 'the descending ground that was associated with love in seventeenth-century opera'."[4]
Musical works with a lament bass
See also
Sources
- ^ a b c Brover-Lubovsky, Bella (2008). Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi, p.151-52. ISBN 9780253351296.
- ^ Ellis, Mark R. (2010). A Chord in Time: The Evolution of the Augmented Sixth from Monteverdi to Mahler, p.200. ISBN 9780754663850.
- ^ Brover-Lubovsky (2008), p.153. "In the eighteenth century...the lament bass almost automatically invoked somber affection, gravity, and oppressiveness."
- ^ Thompson, Shirley (2010). New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier, p.64. ISBN 9780754665793.
- ^ Williams, Peter (1998). The Chromatic Fourth: During Four Centuries of Music, p.69. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165633.
- ^ Frisch, Walter (1996). Schubert: critical and analytical studies, p.10. ISBN 9780803268920.
- ^ Blatter, Alfred (2007).Revisiting music theory, p.240. ISBN 9780415974400.
- ^ Carter, Tim and Butt, John (2005). The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, p.182. ISBN 9780521792738.
- ^ Knapp, Raymond (2009). The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity, p.260. ISBN 9780691141053.
- ^ Lambert, Philip (2010). To Broadway, to life!: The Musical Theater of Bock and Harnick, p.205. ISBN 9780195390070.