Perfect fourth
Encyclopedia
In classical music
from Western culture
, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions (see Interval (music)#Number for more details), and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitone
s. 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 are four staff positions from C to F. Diminished
and augmented fourths span the same number of staff positions, but consist of a different number of semitones (four and six).
The perfect fourth may be derived from the harmonic series
as the interval between the third and fourth harmonics.
The term perfect identifies this interval as belonging to the group of perfect intervals, so called because they are neither major nor minor (unlike thirds, which are either minor
or major
) but perfect.
Up until the late 19th century, the perfect fourth was often called by its Greek name, diatessaron.
Its most common occurrence is between the fifth
and upper root
of all major
and minor triad
s and their extensions.
A perfect fourth in just intonation
corresponds to a pitch ratio of 4:3, or about 498 cent
s , while in equal temperament
a perfect fourth is equal to five semitone
s, or 500 cents.
A helpful way to recognize a perfect fourth is to hum the starting of the "Bridal Chorus" from Wagner's Lohengrin ("Treulich geführt", the colloquially-titled "Here Comes the Bride
"). Other examples are the first two notes of the Christmas carol
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
", and, for a descending perfect fourth, the second and third notes of "O Come All Ye Faithful".
The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison
, octave
, and perfect fifth
, and it is a sensory consonance
. In common practice
harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass. If the bass note also happens to be the chord's root, the interval's upper note almost always temporarily displaces the third
of any chord, and, in the terminology used in popular music, is then called a suspended fourth
.
Conventionally, adjacent strings of the double bass
and of the bass guitar
are a perfect fourth apart when unstopped, as are all pairs but one of adjacent guitar
strings under standard guitar tuning. Sets of tom-tom
drums are also commonly tuned in perfect fourths.
music of the Middle Ages
.
In the 13th century, the fourth and fifth together were the concordantiae mediae (middle consonances) after the unison and octave, and before the thirds and sixths. In the 15th century the fourth came to be regarded as dissonant on its own, and was first classed as a dissonance by Johannes Tinctoris
in his Terminorum musicae diffinitorium (1473). In practice, however, it continued to be used as a consonance when supported by the interval of a third or fifth in a lower voice.
Modern acoustic
theory supports the medieval interpretation insofar as the intervals of unison, octave, fifth and fourth have particularly simple frequency ratios. The octave has the ratio of 2:1, for example the interval between a' at A440 and a
.
In the years that followed, the frequency ratios of these intervals on keyboards and other fixed-tuning instruments would change slightly as different systems of tuning, such as meantone temperament
, well temperament
, and equal temperament
were developed.
In early western polyphony
, these simpler intervals (unison, octave, fifth and fourth) were generally preferred. However, in its development between the 12th and 16th centuries:
The music of the 20th century for the most part discards the rules of "classical" western tonality. For instance, composers such as Erik Satie
borrowed stylistic elements from the Middle Ages, but some composers found more innovative uses for these intervals.
, the tonality
of the common practice period had not yet developed, and many examples may be found with harmonic structures that are built on fourths and fifths. The Musica enchiriadis
of the mid 10th century, a guidebook for musical practice of the time, described singing in parallel fourths, fifths, and octaves. This development continued, and the music of the Notre Dame school
may be considered the apex of a coherent harmony in this style.
For instance, in one Alleluia (
Listen) by Pérotin
, the fourth is favoured. Elsewhere, in parallel organum
at the fourth, the upper line would be accompanied a fourth below. Also important was the practice of Fauxbourdon
, which is a three voice technique (not infrequently improvisatory) in which the two lower voices proceed parallel to the upper voice at a fourth and sixth below. Fauxbourdon, while making extensive use of fourths, is also an important step towards the later triadic harmony of tonality, as it may be seen as a first inversion (or 6/3) triad.
This parallel 6/3 triad was incorporated into the contrapuntal style at the time, in which parallel fourths were sometimes considered problematic, and written around with ornaments or other modifications to the Fauxbourdon style. An example of this is the start of the Marian-Antiphon
Ave Maris Stella (Listen) by Guillaume Dufay
, a master of Fauxbourdon.
until it was fully realized at last by composers of the Baroque
era.
As time progressed through the late Renaissance and early Baroque, the fourth became more understood as an interval that needed resolution. Increasingly the harmonies of fifths and fourths yielded to uses of thirds and sixths. In the example, cadence forms from works by Orlando di Lasso
and Palestrina
show the fourth being resolved as a suspension. (Listen)
In the early Baroque music of Claudio Monteverdi
and Girolamo Frescobaldi
triadic harmony was thoroughly utilized. Diatonic and chromatic passages strongly outlining the interval of a fourth appear in the Lamento genre, and often in Passus duriusculus passages of chromatic descent. In the madrigals
of Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo
the intensive interpretation of the text (Word painting
) frequently highlights the shape of a fourth as an extremely delayed resolution of a fourth suspension. Also, in Frescobaldi's Chromatic Toccata
of 1635 the outlined fourths overlap, bisecting various church modes.
In the first third of the 18th century, ground-laying theoretical treatises on composition and harmony
were written. Jean-Philippe Rameau
completed his treatise Le Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (French: the theory of harmony reduced to its natural principles) in 1722 which supplemented his work of four years earlier, Nouveau Système de musique theoretique (French: new system of music theory); these together may be considered the cornerstone of modern Music theory
relating to consonance and harmony. The Austrian composer Johann Fux
published in 1725 his powerful treatise on the composition of Counterpoint
in the style of Palestrina under the title Gradus ad Parnassum
(Latin: The Steps to Parnassus). He outlined various types of counterpoint (e.g., note against note), and suggested a careful application of the fourth so as to avoid dissonance.
in Bach's time both had a continuing influence up to the late Romantic
period, and the tendencies towards quartal harmony were somewhat suppressed. An increasingly refined cadence, and triadic harmony defined the musical work of this era. Counterpoint was simplified to favour an upper line with a clear accompanying harmony. Still, there are many examples of dense counterpoint utilizing fourths in this style, commonly as part of the background urging the harmonic expression in a passage along to a climax. Mozart
in his so-called Dissonance Quartet
KV
465 (Listen) used Chromatic and Whole tone scales to outline fourths, and the subject of the fugue in the third movement of Beethoven's
Piano sonata op. 110
(Listen) opens with three ascending fourths. These are all melodic examples, however, and the underlying harmony is built on thirds.
Composers started to reassess the quality of the fourth as a consonance rather than a dissonance. This would later influence the development of quartal and quintal harmony
.
The Tristan chord is made up of the note
s F, B, D and G and is the very first chord heard in Richard Wagner
's opera
Tristan und Isolde
. The chord had been found in earlier works (notably Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18
) but Wagner's usage was significant, first because it is seen as moving away from traditional tonal harmony and even towards atonality
, and second because with this chord Wagner actually provoked the sound or structure of musical harmony to become more predominant than its function, a notion which was soon after to be explored by Debussy and others.
Fourth-based harmony became important in the work of Slavic and Scandinavian composers such as Modest Mussorgsky
, Leoš Janáček
, and Jean Sibelius
. These composers used this harmony in a pungent, uncovered, almost archaic way, often incorporating the Folk music
of their particular homelands. Sibelius' Piano Sonata in F-Major op. 12 of 1893 used tremolo
passages of near-quartal harmony in a way that was relatively hard and modern. Even in the example on the right from Mussorgsky's piano-cycle Pictures at an Exhibition
(Избушка на курьих ножках (Баба-Яга) - The Hut on Fowl's Legs) (Listen) the fourth always makes an "unvarnished" entrance.
The Romantic composers Frédéric Chopin
and Franz Liszt
, had use the special "thinned out" sound of fourth-chord in late works for piano (Nuages gris
(Fr: Grey Clouds), La lugubre gondola (Fr: The Mournful Gondola), and other works).
In the 1897 work The Sorcerer's Apprentice
(L'Apprenti sorcier) by Paul Dukas
, the repetition of rising fourths is a musical representation of the tireless work of out-of-control walking brooms causes the water level in the house to "rise and rise". Quartal harmony in Ravel's Sonatine
and Ma Mère l'Oye
(Fr: Mother Goose) would follow a few years later.
In the 20th century, harmony explicitly built on fourths and fifths became important. This became known as quartal harmony for chords based on fourths and quintal harmony for chords based on fifths.
In the music of composers of early 20th century France, fourth chords became consolidated with Ninth chord
s, the Whole tone scale
, the Pentatonic scale, and polytonality
as part of their language, and quartal harmony became an important means of expression in music by Debussy, Maurice Ravel
, and others. Examples are found in Debussy's orchestral work La Mer
(The Sea) and in his piano works, in particular La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) from his Préludes
for piano, Pour les quartes (For Fourths) and Pour les arpéges composées (For Composite Arpeggios) from his Etudes
.
in fourths).
Cadences
are often "altered" to include unresolved suspended chord
s which include a fourth above the bass:
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
from Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions (see Interval (music)#Number for more details), and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five 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. 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 are four staff positions from C to F. Diminished
Diminished fourth
In classical music from Western culture, a diminished fourth is an interval produced by narrowing a perfect fourth by a chromatic semitone. For example, the interval from C to F is a perfect fourth, five semitones wide, and both the intervals from C to F, and from C to F are diminished fourths,...
and augmented fourths span the same number of staff positions, but consist of a different number of semitones (four and six).
The perfect fourth may be derived from the harmonic series
Harmonic series (music)
Pitched musical instruments are often based on an approximate harmonic oscillator such as a string or a column of air, which oscillates at numerous frequencies simultaneously. At these resonant frequencies, waves travel in both directions along the string or air column, reinforcing and canceling...
as the interval between the third and fourth harmonics.
The term perfect identifies this interval as belonging to the group of perfect intervals, so called because they are neither major nor minor (unlike thirds, which are either minor
Minor third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the minor third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. The minor quality specification identifies it as being the smallest of the two: the minor third spans three semitones, the major...
or major
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
) but perfect.
Up until the late 19th century, the perfect fourth was often called by its Greek name, diatessaron.
Its most common occurrence is between the fifth
Fifth
Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five.Fifth may refer to:* Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "Pleading the Fifth"* Fifth column - a political term...
and upper root
Root (chord)
In music theory, the root of a chord is the note or pitch upon which a triadic chord is built. For example, the root of the major triad C-E-G is C....
of all major
Major chord
In music theory, a major chord is a chord having a root, a major third, and a perfect fifth. When a chord has these three notes alone, it is called a major triad...
and minor triad
Minor chord
In music theory, a minor chord is a chord having a root, a minor third, and a perfect fifth.When a chord has these three notes alone, it is called a minor triad....
s and their extensions.
A perfect fourth in just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
corresponds to a pitch ratio of 4:3, or about 498 cent
Cent (music)
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each...
s , while in equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
a perfect fourth is equal to five 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, or 500 cents.
A helpful way to recognize a perfect fourth is to hum the starting of the "Bridal Chorus" from Wagner's Lohengrin ("Treulich geführt", the colloquially-titled "Here Comes the Bride
Bridal Chorus
The "Bridal Chorus" "Treulich geführt", from the 1850 opera Lohengrin, by German composer Richard Wagner, is a march played for the bride's entrance at many formal weddings throughout the Western world...
"). Other examples are the first two notes of the Christmas carol
Christmas carol
A Christmas carol is a carol whose lyrics are on the theme of Christmas or the winter season in general and which are traditionally sung in the period before Christmas.-History:...
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is a Christmas carol that first appeared in 1739 in the collection Hymns and Sacred Poems, having been written by Charles Wesley. This is not the version widely known today. A sombre man, Wesley had requested and received slow and solemn music for his lyrics, not the...
", and, for a descending perfect fourth, the second and third notes of "O Come All Ye Faithful".
The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison
Unison
In music, the word unison can be applied in more than one way. In general terms, it may refer to two notes sounding the same pitch, often but not always at the same time; or to the same musical voice being sounded by several voices or instruments together, either at the same pitch or at a distance...
, octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
, and perfect fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
, and it is a sensory consonance
Consonance
Consonance is a stylistic device, most commonly used in poetry and songs, characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy".Consonance should not be confused with assonance, which is the...
. In common practice
Common practice period
The common practice period, in the history of Western art music , spanning the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, lasted from c. 1600 to c. 1900.-General characteristics:...
harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass. If the bass note also happens to be the chord's root, the interval's upper note almost always temporarily displaces the third
Third (music)
In music and music theory third may refer to:*major third*minor third*augmented third/perfect fourth*diminished third/major second*Third , chord member a third above the root*Mediant, third degree of the diatonic scale...
of any chord, and, in the terminology used in popular music, is then called a suspended fourth
Suspended chord
A suspended chord is a chord in which the third is omitted, replaced usually with either a perfect fourth or a major second , although the fourth is far more common...
.
Conventionally, adjacent strings of the double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
and of the bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
are a perfect fourth apart when unstopped, as are all pairs but one of adjacent guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
strings under standard guitar tuning. Sets of tom-tom
Tom-tom drum
A tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snare.Although "tom-tom" is the British term for a child's toy drum, the name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala; the tom-tom itself comes from Asian or Native American cultures...
drums are also commonly tuned in perfect fourths.
Short history of the fourth
The use of perfect fourths and fifths to sound in parallel with and to "thicken" the melodic line was prevalent in music prior to the European polyphonicPolyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
music of the Middle Ages
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
.
In the 13th century, the fourth and fifth together were the concordantiae mediae (middle consonances) after the unison and octave, and before the thirds and sixths. In the 15th century the fourth came to be regarded as dissonant on its own, and was first classed as a dissonance by Johannes Tinctoris
Johannes Tinctoris
Johannes Tinctoris was a Flemish composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. He is known to have studied in Orléans, and to have been master of the choir there; he also may have been director of choirboys at Chartres...
in his Terminorum musicae diffinitorium (1473). In practice, however, it continued to be used as a consonance when supported by the interval of a third or fifth in a lower voice.
Modern acoustic
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
theory supports the medieval interpretation insofar as the intervals of unison, octave, fifth and fourth have particularly simple frequency ratios. The octave has the ratio of 2:1, for example the interval between a' at A440 and a
Monochord
A monochord is an ancient musical and scientific laboratory instrument. The word "monochord" comes from the Greek and means literally "one string." A misconception of the term lies within its name. Often a monochord has more than one string, most of the time two, one open string and a second string...
.
Meantone temperament
Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, which is a system of musical tuning. In general, a meantone is constructed the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a stack of perfect fifths, but in meantone, each fifth is narrow compared to the ratio 27/12:1 in 12 equal temperament, the opposite of...
, well temperament
Well temperament
Well temperament is a type of tempered tuning described in 20th-century music theory. The term is modelled on the German word wohltemperiert which appears in the title of J.S. Bach's famous composition, The Well-Tempered Clavier...
, and equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
were developed.
In early western polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
, these simpler intervals (unison, octave, fifth and fourth) were generally preferred. However, in its development between the 12th and 16th centuries:
- In the earliest stages, these simple intervals occur so frequently that they appear to be the favourite sound of composers.
- Later, the more "complex" intervals (thirds, sixths, and tritones) move gradually from the margins to the centre of musical interest.
- By the end of the Middle Ages, new rules for voice leadingVoice leadingIn musical composition, voice leading is the term used to refer to a decision-making consideration when arranging voices , namely, how each voice should move in advancing from each chord to the next.- Details :...
had been laid, re-evaluating the importance of unison, octave, fifth and fourth and handling them in a more restricted fashion (for instance, the later forbidding of parallelConsecutive fifthsIn music, consecutive fifths are progressions in which a perfect fifth is followed by a different perfect fifth between the same two musical parts : for example, from C to D in one part along with G to A in a higher part...
octaves and fifths).
The music of the 20th century for the most part discards the rules of "classical" western tonality. For instance, composers such as Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
borrowed stylistic elements from the Middle Ages, but some composers found more innovative uses for these intervals.
Middle ages
In medieval musicMedieval music
Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
, the 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...
of the common practice period had not yet developed, and many examples may be found with harmonic structures that are built on fourths and fifths. The Musica enchiriadis
Musica enchiriadis
Musica enchiriadis is an anonymous musical treatise from the 9th century. It is the first surviving attempt to establish a system of rules for polyphony in classical music. The treatise was once attributed to Hucbald, but this is no longer accepted. Some historians once attributed it to Odo of...
of the mid 10th century, a guidebook for musical practice of the time, described singing in parallel fourths, fifths, and octaves. This development continued, and the music of the Notre Dame school
Notre Dame school
The group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....
may be considered the apex of a coherent harmony in this style.
Listen) by PérotinPérotin
Pérotin , also called Perotin the Great, was a European composer, believed to be French, who lived around the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century. He was the most famous member of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the ars antiqua style...
, the fourth is favoured. Elsewhere, in parallel organum
Organum
Organum is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion , or a combination of...
at the fourth, the upper line would be accompanied a fourth below. Also important was the practice of Fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon – French for false bass – is a technique of musical harmonisation used in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, particularly by composers of the Burgundian School. Guillaume Dufay was a prominent practitioner of the form, and may have been its inventor...
, which is a three voice technique (not infrequently improvisatory) in which the two lower voices proceed parallel to the upper voice at a fourth and sixth below. Fauxbourdon, while making extensive use of fourths, is also an important step towards the later triadic harmony of tonality, as it may be seen as a first inversion (or 6/3) triad.
This parallel 6/3 triad was incorporated into the contrapuntal style at the time, in which parallel fourths were sometimes considered problematic, and written around with ornaments or other modifications to the Fauxbourdon style. An example of this is the start of the Marian-Antiphon
Antiphon
An antiphon in Christian music and ritual, is a "responsory" by a choir or congregation, usually in Gregorian chant, to a psalm or other text in a religious service or musical work....
Ave Maris Stella (
Listen) by Guillaume DufayGuillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...
, a master of Fauxbourdon.
Renaissance and Baroque
The development of tonality continued through the RenaissanceRenaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
until it was fully realized at last by composers of the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
era.
Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance...
and Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
show the fourth being resolved as a suspension. (
Listen)In the early Baroque music of 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...
and Girolamo Frescobaldi
Girolamo Frescobaldi
Girolamo Frescobaldi was a musician from Ferrara, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was influenced by a large number of composers, including Ascanio...
triadic harmony was thoroughly utilized. Diatonic and chromatic passages strongly outlining the interval of a fourth appear in the Lamento genre, and often in Passus duriusculus passages of chromatic descent. In the madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
of Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
the intensive interpretation of the text (Word painting
Word painting
Word painting is the musical technique of writing music that reflects the literal meaning of a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death.Tone painting of words goes at least as far back as Gregorian chant...
) frequently highlights the shape of a fourth as an extremely delayed resolution of a fourth suspension. Also, in Frescobaldi's Chromatic Toccata
Toccata
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...
of 1635 the outlined fourths overlap, bisecting various church modes.
In the first third of the 18th century, ground-laying theoretical treatises on composition and harmony
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...
were written. Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
completed his treatise Le Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels (French: the theory of harmony reduced to its natural principles) in 1722 which supplemented his work of four years earlier, Nouveau Système de musique theoretique (French: new system of music theory); these together may be considered the cornerstone of modern Music theory
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
relating to consonance and harmony. The Austrian composer Johann Fux
Johann Fux
Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. He is most famous as the author of Gradus ad Parnassum, a treatise on counterpoint, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrina style of Renaissance polyphony...
published in 1725 his powerful treatise on the composition of Counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
in the style of Palestrina under the title Gradus ad Parnassum
Gradus
The Latin phrase Gradus ad Parnassum means "Steps to Parnassus". It is sometimes shortened to Gradus. The name Parnassus was used to denote the loftiest part of a mountain range in central Greece, a few miles north of Delphi, of which the two summits, in Classical times, were called Tithorea and...
(Latin: The Steps to Parnassus). He outlined various types of counterpoint (e.g., note against note), and suggested a careful application of the fourth so as to avoid dissonance.
Classical and Romantic
The blossoming of tonality and the establishment of well temperamentWell temperament
Well temperament is a type of tempered tuning described in 20th-century music theory. The term is modelled on the German word wohltemperiert which appears in the title of J.S. Bach's famous composition, The Well-Tempered Clavier...
in Bach's time both had a continuing influence up to the late Romantic
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
period, and the tendencies towards quartal harmony were somewhat suppressed. An increasingly refined cadence, and triadic harmony defined the musical work of this era. Counterpoint was simplified to favour an upper line with a clear accompanying harmony. Still, there are many examples of dense counterpoint utilizing fourths in this style, commonly as part of the background urging the harmonic expression in a passage along to a climax. Mozart
Wolfgang 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 so-called Dissonance Quartet
String Quartet No. 19 (Mozart)
The String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, KV. 465 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed "Dissonance" on account of its unusual slow introduction, is perhaps the most famous of his quartets...
KV
Köchel-Verzeichnis
The Köchel-Verzeichnis is a complete, chronological catalogue of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart which was originally created by Ludwig von Köchel. It is abbreviated K or KV. For example, Mozart's Requiem in D minor was, according to Köchel's counting, the 626th piece Mozart composed....
465 (
Listen) used Chromatic and Whole tone scales to outline fourths, and the subject of the fugue in the third movement of Beethoven'sLudwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
Piano sonata op. 110
Piano Sonata No. 31 (Beethoven)
The Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110, by Ludwig van Beethoven was composed in 1821. It is the central piano sonata in the group of three opp. 109–111 which he wrote between 1820 and 1822, and the thirty-first of his published piano sonatas....
(
Listen) opens with three ascending fourths. These are all melodic examples, however, and the underlying harmony is built on thirds.Composers started to reassess the quality of the fourth as a consonance rather than a dissonance. This would later influence the development of quartal and quintal harmony
Quartal and quintal harmony
In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures with a distinct preference for the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. Quintal harmony is harmonic structure preferring the perfect fifth, the augmented fifth and the diminished fifth...
.
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....
s F, B, D and G and is the very first chord heard in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
. The chord had been found in earlier works (notably Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18
Piano Sonata No. 18 (Beethoven)
The Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major, Op. 31, No. 3, is a sonata for solo piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, the third and last of his Op. 31 piano sonatas. The work dates from 1802...
) but Wagner's usage was significant, first because it is seen as moving away from traditional tonal harmony and even towards atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
, and second because with this chord Wagner actually provoked the sound or structure of musical harmony to become more predominant than its function, a notion which was soon after to be explored by Debussy and others.
Modest Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...
, Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
, and Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
. These composers used this harmony in a pungent, uncovered, almost archaic way, often incorporating the Folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
of their particular homelands. Sibelius' Piano Sonata in F-Major op. 12 of 1893 used tremolo
Tremolo
Tremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
passages of near-quartal harmony in a way that was relatively hard and modern. Even in the example on the right from Mussorgsky's piano-cycle Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition
Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite in ten movements composed for piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.The suite is Mussorgsky's most famous piano composition, and has become a showpiece for virtuoso pianists...
(Избушка на курьих ножках (Баба-Яга) - The Hut on Fowl's Legs) (
Listen) the fourth always makes an "unvarnished" entrance.The Romantic composers Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
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...
, had use the special "thinned out" sound of fourth-chord in late works for piano (Nuages gris
Nuages Gris
Nuages gris , S.199 or Trübe Wolken, is a work for piano solo composed by Franz Liszt on August 24, 1881. It is one of Liszt's most haunting and at the same time one of his most experimental works, representing, according to Allen Forte, "a high point in the experimental idiom with respect to...
(Fr: Grey Clouds), La lugubre gondola (Fr: The Mournful Gondola), and other works).
In the 1897 work The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the English name of a poem by Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling, written in 1797. The poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas.-Story:...
(L'Apprenti sorcier) by Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...
, the repetition of rising fourths is a musical representation of the tireless work of out-of-control walking brooms causes the water level in the house to "rise and rise". Quartal harmony in Ravel's Sonatine
Sonatine (Ravel)
Sonatine is a piano work written by Maurice Ravel. Although Ravel wrote in his autobiography that he wrote the Sonatine after Miroirs, it seems to have been written between 1903 and 1905...
and Ma Mère l'Oye
Ma Mère l'Oye
Ma mère l'oye is a musical work by French composer Maurice Ravel.-Piano versions:Ravel originally wrote Ma mère l'oye as a piano duet for the Godebski children, Mimi and Jean, ages 6 and 7. Ravel dedicated this work for four hands to the children...
(Fr: Mother Goose) would follow a few years later.
Western classical music
In the music of composers of early 20th century France, fourth chords became consolidated with Ninth chord
Ninth chord
A ninth chord is a chord that encompasses the interval of a ninth when arranged in close position with the root in the bass.A dominant ninth is a dominant chord with a ninth. A ninth chord, as an extended chord, typically includes the seventh along with the basic triad structure. Thus, a Cmaj9...
s, the Whole tone scale
Whole tone scale
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 Pentatonic scale, and polytonality
Polytonality
The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
as part of their language, and quartal harmony became an important means of expression in music by Debussy, Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, and others. Examples are found in Debussy's orchestral work La Mer
La Mer (Debussy)
La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre , or simply La mer , is an orchestral composition by the French composer Claude Debussy. It was started in 1903 in France and completed in 1905 on the English Channel coast in Eastbourne...
(The Sea) and in his piano works, in particular La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) from his Préludes
Preludes (Debussy)
Claude Debussy's Préludes are two sets of pieces for solo piano. They are divided into two separate livres, or books, of twelve preludes each. Unlike previous collections of preludes, like those of JS Bach and Chopin, Debussy's do not follow a strict pattern of key signatures.Each book was written...
for piano, Pour les quartes (For Fourths) and Pour les arpéges composées (For Composite Arpeggios) from his Etudes
Études (Debussy)
Claude Debussy's Études are a set of 12 piano etudes composed in 1915. The pieces are extremely difficult to play, as Debussy himself admitted, describing them as "a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands"...
.
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Jazz
Jazz uses quartal harmonies (usually called voicingVoicing (music)
In music composition and arranging, a voicing is the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the pitches in a chord...
in fourths).
Cadences
Cadence (music)
In Western musical theory, a cadence is, "a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of repose or resolution [finality or pause]." A harmonic cadence is a progression of two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music...
are often "altered" to include unresolved suspended chord
Suspended chord
A suspended chord is a chord in which the third is omitted, replaced usually with either a perfect fourth or a major second , although the fourth is far more common...
s which include a fourth above the bass:
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See also
- augmented fourthTritoneIn classical music from Western culture, the tritone |tone]]) is traditionally defined as a musical interval composed of three whole tones. In a chromatic scale, each whole tone can be further divided into two semitones...
- All fifthsAll fifthsAll fifths is a tuning for guitar, in which the interval between each string is a perfect fifth. The conventional "standard tuning" consists of perfect fourths and a single major third between the G and B strings...
- List of intervals
- list of meantone intervals
- eleventhEleventhIn music or music theory an eleventh is the note eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the eleventh....
- chromatic fourthChromatic fourthIn 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...