Tone cluster

The early years of the twentieth century saw tone clusters elevated to central roles in pioneering works by ragtime artists Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin.

[5] As noted by Alan Belkin, however, instrumental timbre can have a significant impact on their effect: "Clusters are quite aggressive on the organ, but soften enormously when played by strings (possibly because slight, continuous fluctuations of pitch in the latter provide some inner mobility).

[12] In scoring the large, dense clusters of the solo organ work Volumina in the early 1960s, György Ligeti, using graphical notation, blocked in whole sections of the keyboard.

[17] Designed by Harrison with his partner William Colvig, the octave bar is a flat wooden device approximately two inches high with a grip on top and sponge rubber on the bottom, with which the player strikes the keys.

The sponge rubber bottom is sculpted so that its ends are slightly lower than its center, making the outer tones of the octave sound with greater force than the intermediary pitches.

5, BWV 816: or the collisions that result from the interaction of multiple lines "locked together in suspensions"[20] in Bach's The Musical Offering: In the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), we find a more daring and idiosyncratic use of tone clusters.

[b] In 1918, critic Charles L. Buchanan described Ornstein's innovation: "[He] gives us masses of shrill, hard dissonances, chords consisting of anywhere from eight to a dozen notes made up of half tones heaped one upon another.

[33] Claude Debussy's Piano Prelude "La Cathédrale Engloutie" makes powerful use of clusters to evoke the sound of "pealing bells – with so many added major seconds one would call this pan-diatonic harmony".

"[40] Between 1911 and 1913, Ives also wrote ensemble pieces with tone clusters such as his Second String Quartet and the orchestral Decoration Day and Fourth of July, though none of these would be publicly performed before the 1930s.

A solo piano piece Cowell wrote the following year, The Tides of Manaunaun (1917), would prove to be his most popular work and the composition most responsible for establishing the tone cluster as a significant element in Western classical music.

[45] Historian and critic Kyle Gann describes the broad range of ways in which Cowell constructed (and thus performed) his clusters and used them as musical textures, "sometimes with a top note brought out melodically, sometimes accompanying a left-hand melody in parallel.

1959; frequently misspelled "Antimony"), and Time Table (1917)—these include The Voice of Lir (1920), Exultation (1921), The Harp of Life (1924), Snows of Fujiyama (1924), Lilt of the Reel (1930), and Deep Color (1938).

[61] George Crumb's Apparitions, Elegiac Songs, and Vocalises for Soprano and Amplified Piano (1979), a setting of verse by Walt Whitman, is filled with clusters, including an enormous one that introduces three of its sections.

[62] The piano part of the second movement of Joseph Schwantner's song cycle Magabunda (1983) has perhaps the single largest chord ever written for an individual instrument: all 88 notes on the keyboard.

Robert Reigle identifies Croatian composer Josip Slavenski's organ-and-violin Sonata Religiosa (1925), with its sustained chromatic clusters, as "a missing link between Ives and [György] Ligeti.

[71] The eighth movement of Messiaen's oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1965–1969) features "a shimmering halo of tone-cluster glissandi" in the strings, evoking the "bright cloud" to which the narrative refers (listenⓘ).

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Storyville pianist Jelly Roll Morton began performing a ragtime adaptation of a French quadrille, introducing large chromatic tone clusters played by his left forearm.

[94] The Stan Kenton Orchestra's April 1947 recording of "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight", arranged by Pete Rugolo, features a dramatic four-note trombone cluster at the end of the second chorus.

[95] As described by critic Fred Kaplan, a 1950 performance by the Duke Ellington Orchestra features arrangements with the collective "blowing rich, dark, tone clusters that evoke Ravel".

In his characteristically imaginative arrangement of George Gershwin's "There's a boat that's leaving soon for New York" from the album Porgy and Bess, Evans contributes chord clusters orchestrated on flutes, alto saxophone and muted trumpets as a background to accompany Miles Davis' solo improvisation.

[102] Leading free jazz composer, bandleader, and pianist Sun Ra often used them to rearrange the musical furniture, as described by scholar John F. Szwed: When he sensed that [a] piece needed an introduction or an ending, a new direction or fresh material, he would call for a space chord, a collectively improvised tone cluster at high volume which "would suggest a new melody, maybe a rhythm."

In comparison with what John Litweiler describes as Taylor's "endless forms and contrasts", the solos of Muhal Richard Abrams employ tone clusters in a similarly free, but more lyrical, flowing context.

[104] Guitarist Sonny Sharrock made them a central part of his improvisations; in Palmer's description, he executed "glass-shattering tone clusters that sounded like someone was ripping the pickups out of the guitar without having bothered to unplug it from its overdriven amplifier.

"[105] Pianist Marilyn Crispell has been another major free jazz proponent of the tone cluster, frequently in collaboration with Anthony Braxton, who played with Abrams early in his career.

[108] Don Pullen, who bridged free and mainstream jazz, "had a technique of rolling his wrists as he improvised—the outside edges of his hands became scarred from it—to create moving tone clusters", writes critic Ben Ratliff.

[110] Like jazz, rock and roll has made use of tone clusters since its birth, if characteristically in a less deliberate manner—most famously, Jerry Lee Lewis's live-performance piano technique of the 1950s, involving fists, feet, and derrière.

[114] In 1971, critic Ed Ward lauded the "tone-cluster vocal harmonies" created by Jefferson Airplane's three lead singers, Grace Slick, Marty Balin, and Paul Kantner.

[117] The Band's 1968 song "The Weight" from their debut album Music from Big Pink features a dissonant vocal refrain with suspensions culminating in a 3-note cluster to the words "you put the load right on me."

"[118] In traditional Japanese gagaku, the imperial court music, a tone cluster performed on shō (a type of mouth organ) is generally employed as a harmonic matrix.

[120] Lou Harrison's Pacifika Rondo, which mixes Eastern and Western instrumentation and styles, mirrors the gagaku approach—sustained organ clusters emulate the sound and function of the shō.

Example of piano tone clusters. The clusters in the upper staff—C ♯ D ♯ F ♯ G ♯ —are four successive black keys. The last two bars, played with overlapping hands, are a denser cluster.
The modern keyboard is designed for playing a diatonic scale on the white keys and a pentatonic scale on the black keys. Chromatic scales involve both. Three immediately adjacent keys produce a basic chromatic tone cluster.
A thirteenth chord collapsed into one octave results in a dissonant tone cluster [ 3 ]
By the fourth octave of the harmonic series , successive harmonics form increasingly small seconds the fifth octave of harmonics (16–32)
Example of Henry Cowell's notation of tone clusters for piano
Rebel, Les Élemens , opening
Rebel, Les Élemens , opening
Bach, ̊O ewigkeit du donnerwort' BWV60 opening
Bach, ̊O ewigkeit du donnerwort' BWV 60
Loure from Bach's French Suite No. 5, concluding bars
Loure from Bach, French Suite No. 5, concluding bars
Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering bars 29–31
J. S. Bach, Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering bars 29–31
Scarlatti Keyboard Sonata K119 bars 143–168
Scarlatti Keyboard Sonata K119 bars 143–168
From Schubert's "Erlkönig"
Extract from Schubert's "Erlkönig"
Beethoven arietta from Piano Sonata 32, bars 96–97
Beethoven arietta from Piano Sonata 32, bars 96–97
Extract from Alkan's Les diablotins , Op. 63, no. 45, featuring tone clusters
Mahler Symphony 2 finale Fig 32, bars 4–10
Mahler Symphony 2 finale Fig 32, bars 4–10
Leo Ornstein was the first composer to be widely known for using tone clusters—though the term itself was not yet used to describe the radical aspect of his work.
Final chord of Tintamarre
Debussy "La cathédrale engloutie", bars 22–28
Debussy "La cathédrale engloutie", bars 22–28
Debussy, "General Lavine" – excentric, bars 11–19
Debussy, "General Lavine" – excentric, bars 11–18
Debussy, Pour l'Egyptienne from 6 Epigraphes Antiques (solo piano version)
As a composer, performer, and theorist, Henry Cowell was largely responsible for establishing the tone cluster in the lexicon of modern classical music.
Béla Bartók and Henry Cowell met in December 1923. Early the next year, the Hungarian composer wrote Cowell to ask whether he might adopt tone clusters without causing offense.
Scott Joplin wrote the first known published composition to include a musical sequence built around specifically notated tone clusters.
Scott Joplin, from Wall Street Rag
Scott Joplin, from Wall Street Rag