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Dense musical chord

A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three adjacent tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys (such as C, C, and D) struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster. Variants of the tone cluster include chords comprising adjacent tones separated diatonically, pentatonically, or microtonally. On the piano, such clusters often involve the simultaneous striking of neighboring white or black keys. 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. In the 1910s, two classical avant gardists, composer pianists Leo Ornstein and Henry Cowell, were recognized as making the first extensive explorations of the tone cluster. During the same period, Charles Ives employed them in several compositions that were not publicly performed until the late 1920s or 1930s, as did Béla Bartók in the latter decade. Since the mid 20th century, they have prominently featured in the work of composers such as Lou Harrison, Giacinto Scelsi, Alfred Schnittke and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and later Eric Whitacre. Tone clusters also play a significant role in the work of free jazz musicians such as Cecil Taylor and Matthew Shipp. In most Western music, tone clusters tend to be heard as dissonant. 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 or voices. Keyboard instruments are particularly suited to the performance of tone clusters because it is relatively easy to play multiple notes in unison on them.

Prototypical tone clusters are chords of three or more adjacent notes on a chromatic scale, that is, three or more adjacent pitches each separated by only a semitone. Three note stacks based on diatonic and pentatonic scales are also, strictly speaking, tone clusters. However, these stacks involve intervals between notes greater than the half tone gaps of the chromatic kind. This can readily be seen on a keyboard, where the pitch of each key is separated from the next by one semitone (visualizing the black keys as extending to the edge of the keyboard): Diatonic scales—conventionally played on the white keys—contain only two semitone intervals; the rest are full tones. In Western musical traditions, pentatonic scales—conventionally played on the black keys—are built entirely from intervals larger than a semitone. Commentators thus tend to identify diatonic and pentatonic stacks as "tone clusters" only when they consist of four or more successive notes in the scale. In standard Western classical music practice, all tone clusters are classifiable as secundal chords—that is, they are constructed from minor seconds (intervals of one semitone), major seconds (intervals of two semitones), or, in the case of certain pentatonic clusters, augmented seconds (intervals of three semitones). Stacks of adjacent microtonal pitches also constitute tone clusters. In tone clusters, the notes are sounded fully and in unison, distinguishing them from ornamented figures involving acciaccaturas and the like. Their effect also tends to be different: where ornamentation is used to draw attention to the harmony or the relationship between harmony and melody, tone clusters are for the most part employed as independent sounds. While, by definition, the notes that form a cluster must sound at the same time, there is no requirement that they must all begin sounding at the same moment. For example, in R. Murray Schafer's choral Epitaph for Moonlight (1968), a tone cluster is constructed by dividing each choir section (soprano/alto/tenor/bass) into four parts. Each of the sixteen parts enters separately, humming a note one semitone lower than the note hummed by the previous part, until all sixteen are contributing to the cluster. Tone clusters have generally been thought of as dissonant musical textures, and even defined as such. 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)." In his first published work on the topic, Henry Cowell observed that a tone cluster is "more pleasing" and "acceptable to the ear if its outer limits form a consonant interval." Cowell explains, "the natural spacing of so called dissonances is as seconds, as in the overtone series, rather than sevenths and ninths Groups spaced in seconds may be made to sound euphonious, particularly if played in conjunction with fundamental chord notes taken from lower in the same overtone series. Blends them together and explains them to the ear." Tone clusters have also been considered noise. As Mauricio Kagel says, "clusters have generally been used as a kind of anti harmony, as a transition between sound and noise." Tone clusters thus also lend themselves to use in a percussive manner. Historically, they were sometimes discussed with a hint of disdain. One 1969 textbook defines the tone cluster as "an extra harmonic clump of notes."

In 1922, composer Dane Rudhyar, a friend of Cowell's, declared approvingly that the development of the tone cluster "imperilled [the] existence" of "the musical unit, the note." While that threat was not to be realized, clusters began to appear in the works of a growing number of composers. Already, Aaron Copland had written his Three Moods (aka Trois Esquisses; 1920–21) for piano—its name an apparent homage to a piece of Leo Ornstein's—which includes a triple forte cluster. 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 First Piano Concerto, Piano Sonata, and the "Night Music" from the Out of Doors suite (all 1926), his first significant works after three years in which he produced little, extensively feature tone clusters. In the 1930s, Cowell's student Lou Harrison utilized keyboard clusters in several works such as his Prelude for Grandpiano (1937). At least as far back as 1942, John Cage, who also 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. Olivier Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus (1944), often described as the most important solo piano piece of the first half of the twentieth century, employs clusters throughout. They would feature in numerous subsequent piano works, by a range of composers. Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstück X (1961) makes bold, rhetorical use of chromatic clusters, scaled in seven degrees of width, from three to thirty six semitones, as well as ascending and descending cluster arpeggios and cluster glissandi. Written two decades later, his Klavierstück XIII employs many of the same techniques, along with clusters that call for the pianist to sit down on the keyboard. 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. 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. While tone clusters are conventionally associated with the piano, and the solo piano repertoire in particular, they have also assumed important roles in compositions for chamber groups and larger ensembles. 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 in such works as Ruth Crawford Seeger's String Quartet (1931) and Iannis Xenakis's Metastaseis (1955) is an elaboration of the tone cluster. "Unlike most tonal and non tonal linear dissonances, tone clusters are essentially static. The individual pitches are of secondary importance; it is the sound mass that is foremost." In one of the most famous pieces associated with the sound mass aesthetic, containing, "one of the largest clustering of individual pitches that has been written", Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1959), for fifty two string instruments, the quarter tone clusters "see[m] to have abstracted and intensified the features that define shrieks of terror and keening cries of sorrow." Clusters appear in two sections of the electronic music of Stockhausen's Kontakte (1958–60)—first as "hammering points very difficult to synthesize", according to Robin Maconie, then as glissandi. 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). Ligeti's organ works make extensive use of clusters. Volumina (1961–62), graphically notated, consists of static and mobile cluster masses, and calls on many advanced cluster playing techniques. The eighth movement of Messiaen's oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1965–69) features "a shimmering halo of tone cluster glissandi" in the strings, evoking the "bright cloud" to which the narrative refers Orchestral clusters are employed throughout Stockhausen's Fresco (1969) and Trans (1971). In Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel (1971), "Wordless vocal tone clusters seep out through the skeletal arrangements of viola, celeste, and percussion." Aldo Clementi's chamber ensemble piece Ceremonial (1973) evokes both Verdi and Ives, combining the original extended duration and mass cluster concepts: a weighted wooden board placed on an electric harmonium maintains a tone cluster throughout the work. Keyboard clusters are set against orchestral forces in piano concertos such as Einojuhani Rautavaara's first (1969) and Esa Pekka Salonen's (2007), the latter suggestive of Messiaen. The choral compositions of Eric Whitacre often employ clusters, as a trademark of his style. Whitacre's chord clusters are fundamentally based around voice leading and not easily interpretable by traditional harmonic analysis. Three composers who made frequent use of tone clusters for a wide variety of ensembles are Giacinto Scelsi, Alfred Schnittke—both of whom often worked with them in microtonal contexts—and Lou Harrison. Scelsi employed them for much of his career, including in his last large scale work, Pfhat (1974), which premiered in 1986. They are found in works of Schnittke's ranging from the Quintet for Piano and Strings (1972–76), where "microtonal strings fin[d] tone clusters between the cracks of the piano keys," to the choral Psalms of Repentance (1988). Harrison's many pieces featuring clusters include Pacifika Rondo (1963), Concerto for Organ with Percussion (1973), Piano Concerto (1983–85), Three Songs for male chorus (1985), Grand Duo (1988), and Rhymes with Silver (1996).

Tone clusters have been employed by jazz artists in a variety of styles, since the very beginning of the form. 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. The growling effect led Morton to dub the piece his "Tiger Rag" In 1909, Scott Joplin's deliberately experimental "Wall Street Rag" included a section prominently featuring notated tone clusters. The fourth of Artie Matthews's Pastime Rags (1913–20) features dissonant right hand clusters. Thelonious Monk, in pieces such as "Bright Mississippi" (1962), "Introspection" (1946) and "Off Minor" (1947), uses clusters as dramatic figures within the central improvisation and to accent the tension at its conclusion. They are heard on Art Tatum's "Mr. Freddy Blues" (1950), undergirding the cross rhythms. By 1953, Dave Brubeck was employing piano tone clusters and dissonance in a manner anticipating the style free jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor would soon develop. The approach of hard bop pianist Horace Silver is an even clearer antecedent to Taylor's use of clusters. During the same era, clusters appear as punctuation marks in the lead lines of Herbie Nichols. In "The Gig" (1955), described by Francis Davis as Nichols's masterpiece, "clashing notes and tone clusters depic[t] a pickup band at odds with itself about what to play." Recorded examples of Duke Ellington's piano cluster work include "Summertime" (1961) and And His Mother Called Him Bill (1967) and This One's for Blanton!, his tribute to a former bass player, recorded in 1972 with bassist Ray Brown. Bill Evans' interpretation of "Come Rain or Come Shine" from the album Portrait in Jazz (1960), opens with a striking 5 tone cluster. In jazz, as in classical music, tone clusters have not been restricted to the keyboard. In the 1930s, the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra's "Stratosphere" included ensemble clusters among an array of progressive elements. 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. 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." Chord clusters also feature in the scores of arranger Gil Evans. 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. In the early 1960s, arrangements by Bob Brookmeyer and Gerry Mulligan for Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band employed tone clusters in a dense style bringing to mind both Ellington and Ravel. Eric Dolphy's bass clarinet solos would often feature "microtonal clusters summoned by frantic overblowing." Critic Robert Palmer called the "tart tone cluster" that "pierces a song's surfaces and penetrates to its heart" a specialty of guitarist Jim Hall's. Clusters are especially prevalent in the realm of free jazz. Cecil Taylor has used them extensively as part of his improvisational method since the mid 1950s. Like much of his musical vocabulary, his clusters operate "on a continuum somewhere between melody and percussion." One of Taylor's primary purposes in adopting clusters was to avoid the dominance of any specific pitch. 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." It was a pianistically conceived device which created another context for the music, a new mood, opening up fresh tonal areas. As free jazz spread in the 1960s, so did the use of tone clusters. 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. 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." 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. Since the 1990s, Matthew Shipp has built on Taylor's innovations with the form. European free jazz pianists who have contributed to the development of the tone cluster palette include Gunter Hampel and Alexander von Schlippenbach. 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. "Building up from arpeggios, he could create eddies of noise on the keyboard like concise Cecil Taylor outbursts." John Medeski employs tone clusters as keyboardist for Medeski Martin & Wood, which mixes free jazz elements into its soul jazz/jam band style.

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. Since the 1960s, much drone music, which crosses the lines between rock, electronic, and experimental music, has been based on tone clusters. On The Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray," recorded in September 1967, organist John Cale uses tone clusters within the context of a drone; the song is apparently the closest approximation on record of the band's early live sound. Around the same time, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek began introducing clusters into his solos during live performances of the band's hit "Light My Fire." Kraftwerk's self titled 1970 debut album employs organ clusters to add variety to its repeated tape sequences. 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. Tangerine Dream's 1972 double album Zeit is replete with clusters performed on synthesizer. The Beatles' 1965 song "We Can Work It Out" features a momentarily grating tone cluster with voices singing A sharp and C sharp against the accompanying keyboard playing a sustained chord on B to the word "time." 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." The sound of tone clusters played on the organ became a convention in radio drama for dreams. Yoritsune Matsudaira, active from the late 1920s to the early 2000s, merged gagakus harmonies and tonalities with avant garde Western techniques. Much of his work is built on the shōs ten traditional cluster formations. 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. The shō also inspired Benjamin Britten in creating the instrumental texture of his 1964 dramatic church parable Curlew River. Its sound pervades the characteristically sustained cluster chords played on a chamber organ Traditional Korean court and aristocratic music employs passages of simultaneous ornamentation on multiple instruments, creating dissonant clusters; this technique is reflected in the work of twentieth century Korean German composer Isang Yun. Several East Asian free reed instruments, including the shō, were modeled on the sheng, an ancient Chinese folk instrument later incorporated into more formal musical contexts. Wubaduhesheng, one of the traditional chord formations played on the sheng, involves a three pitch cluster. Malayan folk musicians employ an indigenous mouth organ that, like the shō and sheng, produces tone clusters. The characteristic musical form played on the bin baja, a strummed harp of central India's Pardhan people, has been described as a "rhythmic ostinato on a tone cluster." Among the Asante, in the region that is today encompassed by Ghana, tone clusters are used in traditional trumpet music. A distinctive "tongue rattling technique gives a greater vibrancy to already dissonant tonal cluster[s] [I]ntentional dissonance dispels evil spirits, and the greater the clangor, the greater the sound barrage.