Quartal and quintal harmony
The terms quartal and quintal imply a contrast, either compositional or perceptual, with traditional harmonic constructions based on thirds: listeners familiar with music of the common practice period are guided by tonalities constructed with familiar elements: the chords that make up major and minor scales, all in turn built from major and minor thirds.
[5] In France, Erik Satie experimented with planing in the stacked fourths (not all perfect) of his 1891 score for Le Fils des étoiles.
Composers who use the techniques of quartal harmony include Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc, Alexander Scriabin, Alban Berg, Leonard Bernstein, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Joe Hisaishi and Anton Webern.
Hindemith constructed large parts of his symphonic work Symphony: Mathis der Maler by means of fourth and fifth intervals.
The works of the Filipino composer Eliseo M. Pajaro [it; nl; tl] (1915–1984) are characterised by quartal and quintal harmonies, as well as by dissonant counterpoint and polychords.
From the beginning, jazz musicians expressed a particular interest in rich harmonic colours, for which non-tertiary harmony was a means of exploration, as used by pianists and arrangers like Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Bill Evans,[15] Milt Buckner,[15] Chick Corea,[7][16] Herbie Hancock,[7][16] and especially McCoy Tyner.
Thin-sounding unison bebop horn sections occur frequently, but these are balanced by bouts of very refined polyphony such as is found in cool jazz.
On his watershed record Kind of Blue, Miles Davis with pianist Bill Evans used a chord consisting of three perfect fourth intervals and a major third on the composition "So What".
[18] From the outset of the 1960s, the employment of quartal possibilities had become so familiar that the musician now felt the fourth chord existed as a separate entity, self standing and free of any need to resolve.
The pioneering of quartal writing in later jazz and rock, like the pianist McCoy Tyner's work with saxophonist John Coltrane's "classic quartet", was influential throughout this epoch.
[19] Tom Floyd claims that the "foundation of 'modern quartal harmony'" began in the era when the Charlie Parker–influenced John Coltrane added classically trained pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner to his ensemble.
[20][clarification needed] Jazz guitarists cited as using chord voicings using quartal harmony include Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow, Chuck Wayne, Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery—however, all in a traditional manner, as major 9th, 13th and minor 11th chords[20] (an octave and fourth equals an 11th).
Jazz guitarists cited as using modern quartal harmony include Jim Hall (especially Sonny Rollins's The Bridge), George Benson ("Sky Dive"), Pat Martino, Jack Wilkins ("Windows"), Joe Diorio, Howard Roberts, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Henry Johnson, Russell Malone, Jimmy Bruno, Howard Alden, Bill Frisell, Paul Bollenback, Mark Whitfield, and Rodney Jones.
[citation needed] Musicians began to work extensively with the so-called church modes of old European music, and they became firmly situated in their compositional process.
Keith Emerson uses programmatic quintal harmony in several places for extended rapid obbligato passages where human fingering would be impracticable, the first on Hammond organ and the second on Modular Moog, in a similar manner to the mutation stops on pipe organs, such as the "Twelfth" at 2 2/3' pitch played against a 4' "Principal" (which plays the eighth note).
Ray Manzarek of The Doors was another keyboard player and composer who put classical and jazz elements, including quartal harmonies, into the service of rock music.
