Example of piano tone clusters. The clusters in the upper staff—C♯ D♯ F♯ G♯—are four successive black keys. The last two bars, played with overlapping hands, are a denser cluster.
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.
A tonecluster is a musical chord comprising at least three adjacent tones in a scale. Prototypical toneclusters are based on the chromatic scale and...
Language cluster or dialect cluster, a geographic distribution of languages Tonecluster, a musical chord comprising at least three consecutive tones in a...
from seconds such as counterpoint. Secundal chords are often called toneclusters more generally, especially when non-diatonic. "[Any] three or more pitches...
of Banba. The Tides of Manaunaun is the best known of Cowell's many tonecluster pieces. The Building of Banba, for which The Tides of Manaunaun was composed...
various game theme songs produced over the past years. A second album, ToneCluster, was released the following year in September. Both albums were released...
theatrical prelude, is the best-known and most widely-performed of Cowell's tonecluster pieces for piano. Cowell was born on March 11, 1897, in rural Menlo Park...
Henry Cowell's toneclusters. Slonimsky later came to regard pandiatonicism as a diatonic counterpart of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, whereby...
Ornstein was the first important composer to make extensive use of the tonecluster. As a pianist, he was considered a world-class talent. By the mid-1920s...
consonant clusters in Old Chinese was analysed in coda and post-coda position. Some "departing tone" syllables have cognates in the "entering tone" syllables...
the emancipation of society and humanity. Michael Broyles calls Ives' tone-cluster-rich song "Majority" as "an incantation, a mystical statement of belief...
leading-tone of the scale, which has a strong tendency to pull towards the tonic of the key (e.g., in C, the third of G7, B, is the leading tone of the...
genre of music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or toneclusters called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions...
between extended and added chords must be made, since the added tones and extended tones are enharmonic, but differ in function. Extended chords always...
augmented unisons are frequently written in modern works involving toneclusters, such as Iannis Xenakis' Evryali for piano solo. The semitone appeared...
transcription delimiters. Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words...
musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, toneclusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations...
modernist toneclusters and spread to orchestral writing by the mid 1950s and 1960s. "Unlike most tonal and non-tonal linear dissonances, toneclusters are...
called the leading-tone triad. This chord has a dominant function. Unlike the dominant triad or dominant seventh, the leading-tone triad functions as...
"collapsed" into one octave results in a dissonant, seemingly secundal tonecluster. Play A dominant thirteenth in F minor. Play Jazz chord Harmonic planing...
the left hand has the seventh, pitched below. The result is a virtual 'tonecluster' ... the harmonic logic of these progressions, within the rules of composition...
1919 Argentine Tango Pancho Vladigerov 1899 1978 Bulgarian Fats Waller 1904 1943 American Jazz Henry Cowell 1897 1965 American Avant-garde, tonecluster...
indications, notated in seconds, as well as specific note clusters and the use of quarter tones, clustered pitches and sound mass which accumulates in a reservoir...
falling–rising 243 [˦˨˧] A sequence of two tones (called a tonecluster) may occur on one syllable. There are eleven toneclusters that can occur on verbs to mark...
fingers sweeping across the strings with the flat of the hand (producing a tonecluster) sweeping along one or more strings with the flesh of the finger(s) scraping...
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