Voicing (music)

111 (1822), Beethoven presents the chord voicing in a much more daring way, with wide gaps between notes, creating compelling sonorities that enhance the meditative character of the music: Philip Barford describes the Arietta of Op.

"[6] William Kinderman finds it "extraordinary that this sensitive control of sonority is most evident in the works of Beethoven's last decade, when he was completely deaf, and could hear only in his imagination.

In the trio section of this movement (bars 48ff), Martin Cooper notes that “Beethoven has enhanced the strangeness of the effect by laying out much of the music four or five octaves apart, with no comfortable ‘filling’ between.

This is a layout common in the works of his last years.” [8]During the Romantic Era, composers continued further in their exploration of sonorities that can be obtained through imaginative chord voicing.

In this passage, Chopin weaves a "magical" pianistic texture around a traditional Polish Christmas carol:[9] Maurice Ravel's Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant from his 1908 suite Ma Mère l'Oye exploits the delicate transparency of voicing afforded through the medium of the piano duet.

"[10] The two chords that open and close Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms have distinctive sonorities arising out of the voicing of the notes.

When the tonic C major finally arrives, in the last movement, its root is doubled in five octaves, its fifth is left to the natural overtones, and its decisive third appears just once, in the highest range.

For example, The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives opens with strings playing a widely spaced G-major chord very softly, at the limits of audibility.

(The term magadization is also used[citation needed] for vocal doubling at the octave, especially in reference to early music.)

[citation needed] For instance, in the opening of John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March",[13] the melody is "doubled" in four octaves.

8 (the "Unfinished" Symphony), the oboe and clarinet play a theme together in unison, an "evocative and uncommon combination,"[16] "an embodiment of melancholy... over a nervous shimmer of semiquavers in the strings".

The passage illustrates how subtle and carefully differentiated doubling can contribute to the sound of a delicate and nuanced orchestral texture: In these three bars, the Bass Clarinet and the Tuba simultaneously sound a sustained pedal point on a low E flat, creating a distinctive blend of timbres.

Drop voicings are often employed by guitarists, as the perfect fourth intervals between the guitar's strings typically make most close position chords cumbersome and impractical to play, particularly in jazz where complex extensions are commonplace.

This facilitates easily playing chord progressions featuring modulation or chromatic movement between keys.