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Tone cluster

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   A tone cluster is a simultaneous musical chord comprised of consecutive
   tones separated chromatically (i.e., by semitones): for instance, the
   tones C, C#, D, D#, E, and F, held at the same time. Variants of the
   tone cluster include chords comprised of consecutive tones separated
   diatonically, pentatonically, or microtonally. In Western classical
   music practice, all tone clusters are classifiable as secundal
   chords—that is, the interval between two consecutive notes in a cluster
   is never more than three semitones. In tone clusters, the notes are
   sounded fully and simultaneously, distinguishing them from ornamented
   figures involving acciaccaturas and the like. In the context of most
   Western music, tone clusters tend to be heard as dissonant.

   In general parlance, a tone cluster consists of three or more
   contiguous notes sounded at the same time—e.g., any three or more
   adjacent piano keys (visualizing the black keys as full-length) struck
   simultaneously. Such a "stack" constitutes a chromatic tone cluster.
   Three-note stacks based on diatonic or pentatonic scales are
   technically clusters, as well; however, because they involve intervals
   between notes greater than the half-tone gaps of the chromatic kind,
   commentators tend to identify such stacks as "tone clusters" only when
   they consist of four or more notes—e.g., four or more successive white
   keys or black keys on the piano struck simultaneously. Keyboard
   instruments, because of the arrangement of the playing area,
   particularly lend themselves to the performance of tone clusters, but
   clusters may be performed with almost any individual instrument on
   which three or more notes can be played simultaneously, as well as by
   most groups of instruments.

Origins/Western classical

   While sporadic examples of tone clusters may be found at least as far
   back as the late 1600s, not before the second decade of the twentieth
   century did they assume a recognized place in the Western classical
   tradition. "Around 1910," Harold C. Schoenberg writes, " Percy Grainger
   was causing a stir by the near–tone clusters in such works as his
   Gumsuckers March." In 1911, what appears to be the first published
   composition to thoroughly integrate true tone clusters was issued:
   Tintamarre (The Clangor of Bells), by Canadian composer J. Humfrey
   Anger (1862–1913). Over the next few years, the radical
   composer-pianist Leo Ornstein built a reputation for his performances
   of cutting-edge piano music. By mid-decade, Ornstein was publicly
   performing his composition Wild Men's Dance (aka Danse Sauvage; ca.
   1913–14); constructed almost entirely out of tone clusters, it is the
   first work to explore the technique in depth ever heard by a
   substantial audience. Concurrently, Charles Ives was composing a piece
   with what would become the most famous set of tone clusters—in the
   second movement, Hawthorne, of the Concord Sonata (ca. 1904–19, publ.
   1920, prem. 1928), mammoth piano chords, some gentle, some violent,
   requiring a wooden bar almost fifteen inches long to play. This
   extraordinary example aside, most piano compositions incorporating tone
   clusters then and now call for performers to use their own fingers,
   hands, or arms. 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.
   Example of piano tone clusters. The clusters in the upper staff (for
   the pianist's right hand)—C#-D#-F#-G#—are played by striking four
   successive black keys at the same time.
   Enlarge
   Example of piano tone clusters. The clusters in the upper staff (for
   the pianist's right hand)—C#-D#-F#-G#—are played by striking four
   successive black keys at the same time.

   The seminal figure in promoting this harmonic technique was Henry
   Cowell, whose Dynamic Motion (1916) for solo piano, written when he was
   nineteen, has been described as "probably the first piece anywhere
   using secundal chords independently for musical extension and
   variation." Though that is not quite accurate, it does appear to be the
   first piece to employ chromatic clusters in such a manner. 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. (Cowell's early piano works are often
   erroneously dated; in the two cases above, as 1914 and 1912,
   respectively.) Assumed by some to involve an essentially random—or,
   more kindly, aleatoric—pianistic approach, Cowell explained that
   precision is required in the writing and performance of tone clusters
   no less than with any other musical feature:

     Tone clusters...on the piano [are] whole scales of tones used as
     chords, or at least three contiguous tones along a scale being used
     as a chord. And, at times, if these chords exceed the number of
     tones that you have fingers on your hand, it may be necessary to
     play these either with the flat of the hand or sometimes with the
     full forearm. This is not done from the standpoint of trying to
     devise a new piano technique, although it actually amounts to that,
     but rather because this is the only practicable method of playing
     such large chords. It should be obvious that these chords are exact
     and that one practices diligently in order to play them with the
     desired tone quality and to have them absolutely precise in nature.

   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."

   During the 1920s and 1930s, Cowell toured widely through North America
   and Europe, playing his own experimental works, many built around tone
   clusters. In addition to The Tides of Manaunaun, Dynamic Motion, and
   its five "encores"—What's This (1917), Amiable Conversation (1917),
   Advertisement (1917), Antinomy (1917, rev. 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 Colour (1938). Tiger (1930)
   has the single largest chord ever written for an individual
   instrument—fifty-three notes. Along with the work of Ives, Cowell's
   Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1928) is one of the first
   large-ensemble pieces to make extensive use of clusters. With The Tides
   of Manaunaun, Cowell also introduced a new notational method for the
   sizable tone cluster, which has been adopted as the standard.

Other exponents

Later Western classical

   The most renowned composer to be directly inspired by Cowell's
   demonstrations of his tone cluster pieces was Béla Bartók, who
   requested Cowell's permission to employ the method. Bartók's Piano
   Sonata (1926) and suite Out of Doors (1926), his first significant
   works after three years in which he produced little, both feature tone
   clusters. Already, Aaron Copland had composed his Three Moods (aka
   Trois Esquisses; 1920–21) for piano—its name an apparent homage to a
   piece of Ornstein's—which includes a triple- forte cluster. At least as
   far back as 1942, John Cage, who studied under Cowell, began writing
   piano pieces with cluster chords; In the Name of the Holocaust, from
   December of that year, includes chromatic, diatonic, and pentatonic
   clusters.

   Tone clusters play a major role not only in many subsequent piano
   works, but in important compositions for chamber and orchestral groups,
   as well. 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." Bartók
   employs both diatonic and chromatic clusters in his Fourth String
   Quartet (1928). The sound mass technique pioneered by such works as
   Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet (1931) and Iannis Xenakis's
   Metastasis (1955) is fundamentally an elaboration of the tone cluster.
   One of the most famous pieces associated with the sound mass aesthetic,
   Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1959), for
   fifty-two string instruments, has been described as "a set of
   variations upon a cluster." In 1961, Ligeti wrote perhaps the largest
   cluster chord ever—in the orchestral Atmosphères, every note in the
   chromatic scale over a range of five octaves is played at once
   (quietly). Avant-garde Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi frequently used
   tone clusters, as in his last large-scale work, Pfhat (1974), which
   premiered in 1986.

Other practices

   Tone clusters have been employed by jazz artists working in a variety
   of styles. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Storyville pianist
   Jelly Roll Morton apparently began incorporating them in his rags. 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. Pianist
   Horace Silver uses tone clusters as a comping technique to rhythmic and
   lively effect, while they appear as punctuation marks in the lead lines
   of Herbie Nichols. The "tart tone cluster" that "pierces a song's
   surfaces and penetrates to its heart" has been described as a specialty
   of guitarist Jim Hall's. Clusters are especially prevalent in the realm
   of free jazz; Cecil Taylor, in particular, has used them extensively as
   part of his improvisational method since the mid-1960s. Scholar John F.
   Szwed outlines their use by free jazz composer, bandleader, and pianist
   Sun Ra:

     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." It was a pianistically
     conceived device which created another context for the music, a new
     mood, opening up fresh tonal areas.

   Since its beginnings, rock and roll has made use of tone clusters, if
   usually in a much less deliberate manner—most famously, Jerry Lee
   Lewis's live-performance piano technique of the 1950s, involving fists,
   arms, flying feet, and derrière. Composers and arrangers such as Duke
   Ellington, Thad Jones, Nelson Riddle, and Bob Brookmeyer have used
   clusters for variety in commercial work and they are employed often in
   the scoring of horror and science-fiction films.

   The use of tone clusters in cadences has been identified in Native
   American social dance songs. According to researcher Lee Zelewicz's
   analysis of two Seneca recordings from different eras, "The clusters do
   not follow the western use of semitones; instead, the pitches are more
   closely related, making them microtones." In traditional Japanese
   gagaku, a tone cluster performed on shõ may be employed as a harmonic
   matrix.
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