‘Color’ in Music

(entry for 10/18/2024)

Before we leave the Bach family, two members of which we have talked about at some length in the last two posts, we need to talk about one more thing, only in this case it isn’t a person, it’s a kind of music.

It’s chromaticism, and it was invented a long time ago, around the year 1400. What does ‘chromatic’ mean? It’s based on the Greek word chroma, which means ‘color,’ so ‘chromatic’ simply means ‘colorful.’ But there we’re faced with a problem. How does music become colorful? In art and photography, when we talk about color vs. black-and-white, the meaning is pretty clear. But in writing or in music, it gets a little tricky. (In writing, it means that it’s more about feelings than ideas, but how does music show more feeling?)

To figure out what we mean, we need to back up a bit. In an earlier post we talked about the difference between ‘whole steps’ and ‘half steps.’ We also talked about the fact that some intervals could be either major or minor, and we mentioned that from C up to E is a major third and that from C up to E-flat is a minor third. In another post we talked about ‘flavor’ in triads, and that the middle note of a triad in root position determined whether that triad was major or minor, and thus determined what it’s ‘flavor’ was. What we didn’t mention is that the distance from E-flat to E is a half-step. So now we’re ready to make some definitions: Music that is primarily made of whole steps and is either major or minor but not both, is called ‘diatonic’ music. (Dye-ah-TAH-nic.) Another way of saying that is that diatonic music usually only has one type of note per letter name. In other words you probably won’t have an E and an E-flat both in the same piece.

When you do have Es and E-flats both, or Cs and C-sharps both, or all four (!), etc., etc., the music is full of half steps, which is considered more ‘colorful’ than diatonic music, and is therefore called ‘chromatic.’ That’s what chromaticism is: the presence in the music of chromatic characteristics. Lots of half-steps, and therefore lots of accidentals. (Accidentals are changes in the pitches of notes that normally occur in the key the piece is in. For example, there is no G-sharp in the key of D major, so the sharp symbol for a G-sharp in that context is called an ‘accidental.’) The sharp sign in front of this note G is an accidental. Any flat or natural or sharp right in front of a note head is an accidental.

So we sort of came in through the back door, but we’re finally here: Chromaticism is music that is rich in half-steps.

Look at the music sample at the head of this post, please. The note-names under the notes spell the name B-A-C-H, which is of course the last name of both our Sebastian and our Karl, whom we discussed in the last two posts. Both J.S. and C.P.E. had a lot of fun with the fact that their last name could be spelled with notes.

But wait! Where did that H come from? There’s no note named H, is there? Well, believe it or not, there is, if you come from Germany, Austria, or some other Teutonic-language country. Back when notes were being given names, in the 1100s, Germans and Austrians found the interval from B to F quite annoying. It was some sort of fifth, because there were five letter names involved. But it didn’t sound like a fifth, or at least not like a perfect fifth, which is what all the other fifths were. There’s a good reason for this: if you count all the pitches from B up to and including F, including C-sharp and D-sharp, you’ll find that there are exactly seven different pitch-names involved (in other words, six half-steps);

    B

    C

    C-sharp (or D-flat)

    D

    D-sharp (or E-flat)

    E    

    F

But any other fifth has eight pitch names involved! For example, from D to A:

    D

    D-sharp (or E-flat)

    E

    F

    F-sharp (or G-flat)

    G

    G-sharp (or A-flat)

    A

Seven half-steps! That’s why all those other fifths have that ‘perfect’ sound to them. A perfect fifth is that size, no matter what letter names are involved. But from B to F is not perfect, it’s diminished. (See the post on intervals, which you can go to by clicking HERE.)

Up to this point there had been only the ‘white notes’ on the piano, no sharps or flats. Two things happened, almost simultaneously: the note F-sharp was invented ('Fa-diesis' in Italian), so that there could be a perfect fifth up from B, and the note B-flat was invented, so that there could be a perfect fifth down from F. I say, B-flat was invented, but I should have said that in English-speaking countries B-flat was invented. In Germany and Austria, something entirely different happened. The reasoning went something like this: “The distance from F down to a perfect fifth lower should be called B-something, because that way there are five letter names involved, but we’re going to call this new note we have invented ‘just plain B,’ and that other note, that horrible one, that we used to call B, we’re going to call that note H.” Or something like that!

In any event, Teutonic-language countries ended up with eight note names instead of the seven that the rest of us make do with, and that’s why Bach could spell his name with notes! (If he had lived in England, this wouldn’t have worked!)

(This whole problem could be safely and completely ignored in Latin-speaking countries, where the note names were Do – Re – Mi, etc.)

By the 1400s, all the other ‘black’ notes had been invented, for similar reasons, so it was possible to play (or sing) twelve different pitches in an octave. From C to C going up they are:

    C

    C-sharp (or D-flat)

    D

    D-sharp (or E-flat)

    E

    F

    F-sharp (or G-flat)

    G

    G-sharp (or A-flat)

    A

    A-sharp (or B-flat)

    B

And then back to C again, which makes thirteen, but only twelve different pitches, so that scale, called the Chromatic Scale, has 12 different possible pitch-names in it. And it’s very colorful, so it lives up to its name.

Which brings us back to Mr. Bach again, or, rather, to all the Bachs, Mr., Mrs., and Ms. And seniors and juniors. Etc.

Sebastian composed several different pieces (mostly for organ) that took advantage of this idea. The most famous is the last movement of his multi-movement organ masterpiece The Art of the Fugue, in which these four notes are the first four notes of his main melody (though things get a lot more complicated than that farther on). Both Johann Christian and Karl Philipp Emmanuel followed suit, with at least two similar pieces each, and the idea spread like wildfire. Fist, other composers named Bach started doing it. Eventually composers not named Bach took up the mantle, and within a couple of decades there were dozens of composers doing Fantasies and other types of pieces on the name, even in countries where nobody ever heard of a note called H. A hundred years later, people were still doing it! Brahms, a hundred and fifty years later, did one!

Now go back and look at the four note pattern itself (top of the post). Notice anything interesting? Right, it’s a chromatic note pattern! The first two notes are a half-step apart. Then we jump up a minor third, then the next interval is another half-step down. But also notice that we ended up another half step above the first note! So even though the pattern is down and down, the net effect is that we have gone up. Only a half step, to be sure, but nevertheless up.  But while Bach did love the chromatic effect and used it quite a lot, it did not saturate his music, as would happen a couple of generations later.

These types of musical relationships eventually (in about a hundred years or so after Sebastan did it) became the basis of a new Era in music, the Romantic Era, which Beethoven, Schubert and von Weber started, but which quickly spread throughout the musical world. Take Beethoven’s famous Moonlight Sonata for example. In the first eighteen measures alone, there are twenty-nine different accidentals, not counting octave doublings! (And this is not counting the four sharps in the key signature, as these are not accidentals, but elements of the key signature.) In other words, the Moonlight Sonata is very chromatic. In other words, it is ‘Romantic.’  An abundance of Chromaticism is the primary difference between earlier Eras in music and the Romantic one.

One of the people it spread to was the English composer Mendelssohn, and he’s the subject of our next post, and for a very good reason: almost single-handedly he ‘resurrected’ Sebastian from the obscurity he had fallen into by the time of his death. How appropriate is that?!?

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