Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective music Formed freely from all degrees of a diatonic scale without regard for their diatonic function, sometimes to the extent of no single pitch being felt as a tonic.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pan- +‎ diatonic, coined by Nicolas Slonimsky.

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Examples

  • It isn't difficult at all to trace a line from either Milhaud's polytonality or "wrong note" basses or Cowell's cluster or late pandiatonic music to those chords of Wilson you describe.

    Our Prayer Matthew Guerrieri 2007

  • Conclusion: we didn't go quite as far as William Mann's "pandiatonic clusters" when reviewing the Beatles in the Times, or Tony Palmer's claim that they were the greatest song-writers since Schubert.

    Top of the whats? Jessica 2008

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