Bitonality in jazz harmony is a frequent occurrence, either incidentally in chord

structure and voicing or purposefully in the improvisation of lines. It occurs as a function

of the relationships between basic triads and certain applied extensions, and a knowledge
of these relationships can help make for more creative and expressive improvisation
outside the box of the most commonly used scales and modes.

Bitonality at the interval of the major second is one of the most common manifestations.
This arises because the 13 chord (with either the major or flatted 7th) with an added sharp
11 can be seen as a major or dominant seventh, typically with the fifth omitted, atop
which is stacked a major triad with its root a major second higher than the primary chord
root. Consider the following chord sequence:

Each chord can be taken vertically as a single unit, but the whole can also be broken
down into two parallel progressions of the basic formula V/V>V>I, which occur in
the keys of D (below) and E (above) simultaneously. Both E>A>D (bass clef) and
F#>B>E (treble) follow this formula in tandem with one another.

When the chord extensions are eliminated, yielding E7>A7>Dmaj7, we can still use
the harmonies implied by those extensions as a basis for improvisation:

The bitonal tension was resolved in this case upon arrival at I, turning it into a simple
Dmaj9 and mirroring the resolution at the end of the dominant chain. The improvised
line shown is strongly triadic; for the two bitonal chords, playing based in the Mixolydian
mode of the implied upper chord root in each case (F# Mixolydian, B Mixolydian) would
also work well.

Another common instance of bitonal harmony in jazz involves the dominant 7th chord
with a sharp 9, which creates bitonality at the interval of the minor 3rd:

The operating principle is the same, though now the 7th of the lower chord doubles as the
5th of the upper. Here, borrowing from the Phrygian mode with the same root as that of
each fundamental chord (Eb Phrygian, Ab Phrygian) would produce good results.

Soloing outside the box can be done a way which is grounded in bitonal principles such
as these, whether one thinks of them modally or in terms of parallel, bitonal harmonies.

Polytonality
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Polytonality (also polyharmony (Cole & Schwartz)) is the musical use of more than one
key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time.
Polyvalence is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at the
same time (Leeuw 2006, 87).

Example of C and F sharp major chords together in Stravinsky's Petrushka.

At the beginning of the second tableau of Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Petrushka, the first
clarinet plays a melody that uses the notes of the C major chord, while the second clarinet
plays a variant of the same melody using the notes of the F-sharp-major chord.

Some examples of bitonality superimpose fully harmonized sections of music in different

keys.

Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Polytonality and polychords
o 2.1 Polymodality
o 2.2 Polyscalarity
3 Challenges
o 3.1 Octatonicism
4 See also
5 Sources

6 Further reading

[edit] History

Mozart used polytonality in his A Musical Joke for comic effect.

The earliest uses of polytonality in non-programmatic contexts are found in the twentieth
century, particularly in the work of Charles Ives (Psalm 67, ca. 18981902), Bla Bartk
(Fourteen Bagatelles, op. 6, 1908), and Stravinsky (Petrushka, 1911) (Whittall 2001).
Ives claimed that he learned the technique of polytonality from his father, who taught him
to sing popular songs in one key while harmonizing them in another (Crawford 2001,
503).
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is widely credited with popularizing bitonality, and
contemporary writers such as Casella (1924) describe him as progenitor of the technique:
"the first work presenting polytonality in typical completenessnot merely in the guise
of a more or less happy 'experiment,' but responding throughout to the demands of
expressionis beyond all question the grandiose Le Sacre du Printemps of Stravinsky
(1913) " (Casella 1924, 164).

Bartk's "Playsong" demonstrates easily perceivable bitonality through "the harmonic

motion of each key...[being] relatively uncomplicated and very diatonic" (Kostka &
Payne 1995, 495). Here, the "duality of key" featured is A minor and C# minor:

Bitonality in the opening to Bartk's "Playsong", Mikrokosmos No. 105 (Kostka & Payne
1995, 495). Play (helpinfo)

Example of polytonality or extended tonality from Milhaud's Saudades do Brazil (1920)

Play (helpinfo), right hand in B major and left hand in G major, or both hands in
extended G major (Leeuw 2005, 87).

Other polytonal composers influenced by Stravinsky include those in the French group,
Les Six, particularly Darius Milhaud, as well as Americans such as Aaron Copland
(Marquis 1964,[page needed]).

Sextet for String Quartet, Clarinet, and Piano (Marquis 1964, 23)

Bitonality is also found in folk music: for example, tribes throughout India use bitonality
in responsorial song (Babiracki 1991, 76).

[edit] Polytonality and polychords

Polytonality requires the presentation of simultaneous key-centers. The term "polychord"
describes chords that can be constructed by superimposing multiple familiar tonal
sonorities. For example, familiar ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords can be built from
or decomposed into separate chords:

Separate chords within an extended chord (Marquis 1964.[page needed]).

Thus polychords do not necessarily suggest polytonality, as they may be heard as

belonging to a single key. This is the norm in jazz, for example, which makes frequent
use of "extended" and polychordal harmonies without any intended suggestion of
"multiple keys."

The following passage, taken from Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E, Op. 81a (Les
Adieux), suggests clashes between tonic and dominant harmonies in the same key
(Marquis 1964,[page needed]).

Bitonality suggested in Beethoven (Marquis 1964,[page needed]).

Leeuw points to Beethoven's use of the clash between tonic and dominant, such as in his
Third Symphony, as polyvalency rather than bitonality, with polyvalency being, "the
telescoping of diverse functions that should really occur in succession to one another"
(Leeuw 2006, 87).

Polyvalency in Beethoven Play (helpinfo) (Leeuw 2006, 88).

Polyvalency in Stravinsky's Mass Play (helpinfo) (Leeuw 2006, 88).

[edit] Polymodality

Passages of music, such as Poulenc's Mouvements Perpetuels, I., may be misinterpreted

as polytonal rather than polymodal. In the example given the two scales are recognizable
but are assimilated through the common tonic (B) (Vincent 1951, 272).

[edit] Polyscalarity

Polyscalarity is defined as "the simultaneous use of musical objects which clearly suggest
different source-collections (Tymoczko 2002, 83). "Specifically in reference to
Stravinsky's music, Tymoczko uses the term polyscalarity out of deference to
terminological sensibilities (Tymoczko 2002, 85). In other words, the term is meant to
avoid any implication that the listener can perceive two keys at once. Though Tymoczko
believed that polytonality is perceivable, he believed polyscalarity is better suited to
describe Stravinsky's music. This term is also used as a response to Van den Toorn's
analysis against polytonality. Van den Toorn, in an attempt to dismiss polytonal analysis
used a monoscalar approach to analyze the music with the octatonic scale. However,
Tymoczko states that this was problematic in that it does not resolve all instances of
multiple interactions between scales and chords. Moreover, Tymoczko quotes
Stravinsky's claim that the music of Petrouchka's second tableau was conceived "in two
keys" (Tymoczko 2002, 85). Polyscalarity is then a term encompassing multiscalar
superimpositions and cases which give a different explanation than the octatonic scale.

[edit] Challenges
Some music theorists, including Milton Babbitt and Paul Hindemith have questioned
whether polytonality is a useful or meaningful notion or "viable auditory possibility"
(Baker 1983, 163). Babbitt called polytonality a "self-contradictory expression which, if
it is to possess any meaning at all, can only be used as a label to designate a certain
degree of expansion of the individual elements of a well-defined harmonic or voice-
leading unit" (Babbitt 1949, 380). Other theorists to question or reject polytonality
include Allen Forte and Benjamin Boretz, who hold that the notion involves logical
incoherence (Tymoczko 2002, 84).

Other theorists, such as Dmitri Tymoczko, respond that the notion of "tonality" is a
psychological, not a logical notion (Tymoczko 2002, 84). Furthermore, Tymoczko argues
that two separate key-areas can, at least at a rudimentary level, be heard at one and the
same time: for example, when listening to two different pieces played by two different
instruments in two areas of a room (Tymoczko 2002, 84).

[edit] Octatonicism

Some critics of the notion of polytonality, such as Pieter van den Toorn, argue that the
octatonic scale accounts in concrete pitch-relational terms for the qualities of "clashing,"
"opposition," "stasis," "polarity," and "superimposition" found in Stravinsky's music and,
far from negating them, explains these qualities on a deeper level (Van den Toorn and
Tymoczko 2003, 179). For example, the passage from Petrushka, cited above, uses only
notes drawn from the C octatonic collection C-C-D-E-F-G-A-A.

[edit] See also

List of polytonal pieces
Bimodality
polymodal chromaticism
Petrushka chord
Elektra chord
Woody Shaw

[edit] Sources
Babiracki, Carol M. (1991). "Tribal Music in the Study of Great and Little
Traditions of Indian Music". In Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of
Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, edited by Bruno Nettl and
Philip V. Bohlman, 6990. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-
57409-1.
Babbitt, Milton (1949). "The String Quartets of Bartk". Musical Quarterly 35,
no. 3 (July): 37785.
Baker, James (1983). "Schenkerian Analysis and Post-Tonal Music", In Aspects of
Schenkerian Theory, edited by David Beach, 15386. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02800-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-300-02803-2 (pbk).
Casella, Alfred (1924). "Tone Problems of Today". Musical Quarterly 10:15971.
Crawford, Richard (2001). America's Musical Life: a History. New York: Norton.
Cole, Richard, and Ed Schwartz, ed. "Polyharmony". Virginia Tech Multimedia
Music Dictionary. Virginia Tech.
http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textp/Polyharmony.html. Retrieved
2007-08-04.
 Hindemith, Paul (194142). The Craft of Musical Composition, vols. 1 and 2,
translated by Arthur Mendel and Otto Ortmann. New York: Associated Music
Publishers; London: Schott & Co. Original German edition as Unterweisung im
Tonsatz. 3 vols. Mainz, B. Schott's Shne, 193770.
Kostka, Stefan, and Dorothy Payne (1995). Tonal Harmony, with an Introduction
to Twentieth-Century Music, third edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-
035874-5.
Leeuw, Ton de (2005). Music of the Twentieth Century: A Study of Its Elements
and Structure. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 90-5356-765-8.
Marquis, G. Welton (1964). Twentieth Century Music Idioms. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Tymoczko, Dmitri. 2002. "Stravinsky and the Octatonic: A Reconsideration".
Music Theory Spectrum 24, no. 1:68102.
Van den Toorn, Pieter C., and Dmitri Tymoczko (2003) "Colloquy: Stravinsky and
the Octatonic: The Sounds of Stravinsky". Music Theory Spectrum 25, no. 1
(Spring): 167202.
Vincent, John (1951). The Diatonic Modes in Modern Music. University of
California Publications in Music 4. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Whittall, Arnold (2001). "Bitonality". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London:
Macmillan Publishers.
Wilson, Paul (1992). The Music of Bla Bartk. Composers of the Twentieth
Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05111-5.

[edit] Further reading

Reti, Rudolph (1958). Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality: A Study of Some Trends in
Twentieth Century Music. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-
20478-0.

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