Definitions

Sorry, no definitions found. Check out and contribute to the discussion of this word!

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word whole-tone.

Examples

  • Fluttering melodic figures, submerged in whole-tone scales and rippling intervals, escaped into the air only to evaporate into a limpid, Wagnerian fog, specked by floating dissonances.

    An Otherworldly Opera Jonathan Blitzer 2011

  • (I'll have to go back and listen again, but I seem to remember Debussy having some fun in some piece — Images, maybe? — with conflating the half-step difference between whole-tone scales and common-tone key shifts.)

    Mod squad Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • In these sometimes bizarre works, many of which evoke the despair of the composer's old age (the wandering harmonies of "Nuages Gris"), Liszt flirted with the extreme chromaticism ("En Reve"), augmented chords and whole-tone scales ("La Lugubre Gondola") that would provide paths out of tonality for later composers.

    Pianists Andre Watts and Evgeny Kissin offer Liszt recitals 2011

  • (Soundbite of scale on piano) Mr. VALI: These two whole-tone scales move into the background and generate a whole array of harmonies on the foreground.

    Debussy's 'La Mer' Marks 100th Birthday 2005

  • The stacking of major seconds is extensive enough in this song to account for an entire whole-tone scale, a certainly unique (and subtle) musical feat of the sort not normally associated with The Fall.

    FallNet - was expecting a free tea kettle from Granada TV. It did not materialise. 1999

  • And in his late works he anticipated the whole-tone scale and impressionistic procedures of Debussy.

    Playing Liszt Machlis, Joseph 1987

  • The Firvulag throng was now almost out of control, straining close to the platform on their side of the field and making an uproar of derisive twitters, growls, and a deep bourdon drone of humming that now reached a crescendo of maddening whole-tone intervals.

    The Golden Torc May, Julian, 1931- 1981

  • And whole-tone and duodecuple scales and modern harmony in general are taking us farther and farther away from those natural laws of the vibrating string upon which arm-chair theorists have sought to build a very top-heavy edifice.

    Recent Developments in European Thought Various

  • _Tristan_ (bars 6 to 10), experimented with the whole-tone scale and drew his pen through it, as was to be expected from

    Music Notation and Terminology Karl Wilson Gehrkens 1928

  • F [sharp] -- G [sharp], G [flat] -- A [flat], etc. The expressions _half-step_ and _whole-step_ are much to be preferred to _half-tone_ and _whole-tone_, as being more clear and definite.

    Music Notation and Terminology Karl Wilson Gehrkens 1928

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.