In music

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...

, the lament bass is a ground bass, built from a descending perfect fourth

Perfect fourth

In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...

 from 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...

 to dominant

Dominant (music)

In music, the dominant is the fifth scale degree of the diatonic scale, called "dominant" because it is next in importance to the tonic,and a dominant chord is any chord built upon that pitch, using the notes of the same diatonic scale...

, with each step harmonized

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

. The diatonic

Diatonic and chromatic

Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony...

 version is the upper tetrachord

Tetrachord

Traditionally, a tetrachord is a series of three intervals filling in the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion. In modern usage a tetrachord is any four-note segment of a scale or tone row. The term tetrachord derives from ancient Greek music theory...

 from the natural minor scale

Aeolian mode

The Aeolian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale called the natural minor scale.The word "Aeolian" in the music theory of ancient Greece was an alternative name for what Aristoxenus called the Low Lydian tonos , nine semitones...

, known as the Phrygian tetrachord

Descending tetrachord

In music theory, the descending tetrachord is a series of four notes from a scale, or tetrachord, arranged in order from highest to lowest, or descending order. For example --- , as created by the Andalusian cadence. The descending tetrachord may fill a perfect fourth or a chromatic...

, while the chromatic version, the chromatic fourth

Chromatic fourth

In music, a chromatic fourth, or passus duriusculus, is a melody or melodic fragment spanning a perfect fourth with all or almost all chromatic intervals filled in . The quintessential example is in D minor with the tonic and dominant notes as boundaries, :The chromatic fourth was first used in the...

, has all semitone

Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically....

s filled in. It is often used in music to denote tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 or sorrow

Sorrow (emotion)

Sorrow is an emotion, feeling, or sentiment. Sorrow 'is more "intense" than sadness...it implies a long term state'. At the same time 'sorrow - but not unhappiness - suggests a degree of resignation...which lends sorrow its peculiar air of dignity'....

.

However, "A common misperception exists that the 'lament bass' of Venetian opera

Italian opera

Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers,...

 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

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...

, once characterized the minor tetrachord as 'the descending ground that was associated with love in seventeenth-century opera'."

Musical works with a lament bass

• "Lamento della Ninfa" by Claudio Monteverdi
  Claudio Monteverdi
  Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
  
  
• "Dido's Lament"
  Dido's lament
  "Dido's Lament" is the commonly-used name for the noted aria, "When I am laid in earth", from the opera, Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell ....
  
   by Henry Purcell
  Henry Purcell
  Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
  
  
• "Hedwig's Lament
  Hedwig and the Angry Inch Original Cast Album
  Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a 2001 American musical film based on the stage musical of the same title about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transgendered singer. Hedwig is portrayed by John Cameron Mitchell, and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask...
  
  ", from Hedwig and the Angry Inch
  Hedwig and the Angry Inch (film)
  Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a 2001 American musical comedy-drama film based on the stage musical of the same title about a fictional rock band fronted by an East German transgender singer. The film was adapted and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who also portrayed the title role...
  
  
• "I've Got What You Want" and "Tiger, Tiger", from The Apple Tree
  The Apple Tree
  The Apple Tree is a series of three musical playlets with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and a book by Bock and Harnick with contributions from Jerome Coopersmith...