8

Quartal and Secondal Harmony

I. Chords may be constructed of intervals other than thirds; fourths, fifths, or seconds are frequently used.
Perfect fourths may be superimposed or combined with augmented fourths. Perfect or diminished fifths can
also be used.

II. The use of the Hanson, Persichetti, and Hindemith systems is appropriate in the analysis of quartal and
secondal harmony. (See Part IV, Unit 2.)

III. Secondal sonorities are often the result of closely spaced quartal or tertian chords. The effect of a sonority
results not so much from the intervals it contains as from the spacing of these intervals. Thick secondal
sonorities are usually termed clusters.

IV. Since traditional chord names do not apply to nontertian harmony, the following terminology is suggested:
Number of Different
Notes in a Chord
2
3
4
5
6
7

*For further examples of nontraditional notation, see Stone.

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Name
dyad
triad (trichord)
tetrad
pentad
hexad
heptad

V. Few works are consistently quartal or secondal. Often the two types can be mixed, and both work well with
tertian material, including tall chords. Quartal chords can gain greater variety by inverting the intervals they
contain. (The term inversion does not apply here in the traditional sense, since the quality and function of
quartal materials alter with rearrangement.) A four- and a three-note quartal sonority follow, each followed
by chords derived through inversion:

VI. Some possible cadences follow. Note that the first two examples contain chords derived exclusively from
perfect fourths. The third example contains both perfect and augmented fourths, and its final chord is a triad.

VII. Chord and melody. In quartal context, melodic lines will often reflect the underlying quartal harmony by
using frequent leaps of fourths. Projections of fourths and sequential patterns typically result in the use of all
the notes of the chromatic scale.

VIII. Suggestions for class discussion.

A. Analyze the examples in Unit 34 of Music for Analysis. Students may bring additional examples from the
literature into class.
B. Carefully analyze the following sonorities, using any system. (See Part IV, Unit 2, for various systems.)

C. Suggested reading (see the Bibliography): Dallin, Hanson, Hindemith, Persichetti, Ulehla.

Exercises
1. Respace and rearrange (by inversion of intervals) each of the following sonorities in at least five ways:

QUARTAL AND SECONDAL HARMONY

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2.

Study the Hindemith Mathis der Maler: Grablegung (#421 in Music for Analysis). Then, analyze the given
chords in the following, and continue harmonizing using the same vocabulary.
a.

b.

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3.

Continue the following for ten to fifteen measures:

4.

Compose a brief work for instruments available in class using nontertian chord structures.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY MATERIALS