Definition of chromaticism

chromaticism

(from Gk. khroma, ‘colour’).

 

In the modern sense, the use of a scale that divides the octave into 12 equal intervals of a semitone (see scale, 4). Chromaticism has been a feature of music since its origins in ancient Greece, however, in the sense of the ‘colouring’ of intervals by non-diatonic subdivision. Greek theory recognized a partly chromatic tetrachord involving two adjacent semitones. There was discussion in the 14th century about the value of incorporating all possible musica ficta notes into the diatonic series to make a complete chromatic scale, already a feature in keyboard instruments of the time. In the later 16th century chromatic inflection was exploited by Italian madrigalists, notably Marenzio and Gesualdo (see madrigal, 3). In the Baroque period, chromaticism was an important source of Affekt (see affections, doctrine of), not only as an expressive device in vocal music but also in such instrumental works as fugues and other contrapuntal forms on chromatic subjects.

Against the background of a universal tonal language, chromaticism in the Classical and Romantic periods is usually interpreted as a steady historical progress towards the dissolution of tonality. Whereas the extremes of tonal chromaticism in Classical music—for example in the Introduction of Mozart's ‘Dissonance’ Quartet k465—elaborated a decisive tonal centre, so that the fundamentally diatonic harmonic structure of a piece was never in question, the richer tonal palette of such early 19th-century composers as Chopin brought chromatic ambiguity into the basic material of composition. Wagner's chromatic harmony (though itself owing much to Liszt) was the principal influence over this process. His increasing emphasis on non-diatonic chords (especially in Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal) and his use of complex chromatic alterations obscuring the immediate sense of diatonic reference, with the ‘classical’ distinction between closely and distantly related keys becoming less salient, all prepared for the appearance of ‘total chromaticism’.

By 1909 Schoenberg and his pupils were writing music whose characteristics were post-tonal—relatively free of the constraints of major–minor tonality, functional harmony, and the concepts of dissonance and consonance as separate, complementary harmonic phenomena (see, for example, Schoenberg's Erwartung and Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra op. 6). A more ordered kind of chromaticism appeared in the 1920s in the form of twelve-note music, in which the repeated permutations of the chromatic scale are one organizing element of the pitch structure. Although the extreme heterogeneity of later 20th-century music embodied resistance to such total chromaticism as much as perpetuation of it, the most vital tonal music being written at the turn of the millennium was undoubtedly more chromatic than diatonic.

 

Jonathan Dunsby / Arnold Whittall

 

Chromaticism.

(1) The use of chromatic intervals and chromatic chords.

(2) A style of composing using chromatic harmony. Gesualdo in 16th cent. used advanced chromaticism. Bach's experiments in chromaticism were based on diatonic principles. The age of Romanticism explored chromaticism further because of need for emotional expression, hence the chromatic elements in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and later works. See Atonal .