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Chromatic fourth

For Chromatic tetrachord, see Chromatic genus.
Chromatic run from Chopin's Prelude in C Minor, mm.5-6.[1]

In music theory, a chromatic fourth, or passus duriusculus,[2] is a melody or melodic fragment spanning a perfect fourth with all or almost all chromatic intervals filled in (chromatic line). The quintessential example is in D minor with the tonic and dominant notes as boundaries:

\relative c{ \new Staff \with {\remove "Time_signature_engraver" \clef bass } \time 11/4 \key d \minor d cis c b bes a bes b c cis d }

The chromatic fourth was first used in the madrigals of the 16th century.[citation needed] The Latin term itself—"harsh" or "difficult" (duriusculus) "step" or "passage" (passus)—originates in Christoph Bernhard's 17th-century Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (1648–49), where it appears to refer to repeated melodic motion by semitone creating consecutive semitones.[2] The term may also relate to the pianto associated with weeping.[2] In the Baroque, Johann Sebastian Bach used it in his choral as well as his instrumental music, in the Well-Tempered Clavier, for example (the chromatic fourth is indicated by the red notes):

\relative c'{ \key d \minor \times 2/3 {[d16 e f]} \times 2/3 {[g f e]} \times 2/3 {[f g a]} \times 2/3 {[bes a g]} a8 \override NoteHead.color = #red d cis c b bes a \override NoteHead.color = #black g ~ g f e a }
Lament bass from Vivaldi's motet "O qui coeli terraeque serenitas" RV 631, Aria No. 2[3] In operas of the Baroque and Classical, the chromatic fourth was often used in the bass and for woeful arias, often being called a "lament bass". In the penultimate pages of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the chromatic fourth appears in the cellos and basses. .

This does not mean that the chromatic fourth was always used in a sorrowful or foreboding way, or that the boundaries should always be the tonic and dominant notes. One counterexample comes from the Minuet of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet in G major, K. 387 (the chromatic fourths are conveniently bracketed by the slurs and set apart with note-to-note dynamics changes):

\relative c'{ \key g \major \time 3/4 \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"violin" \p fis'( d) r d( b) r b( c \f cis \p d \f dis \p e) \f a,( \p bes \f b \p c \f cis \p d \f) }
  1. ^ Benward, Bruce, and Marilyn Nadine Saker. 2009. Music in Theory and Practice, p.216. Eighth edition. 2 vols. + 2 CD sound discs. Boston: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-310188-0.
  2. ^ a b c Monelle, Raymond (2000). The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays, p.73. ISBN 978-0-691-05716-3.
  3. ^ Williams, Peter (1998). The Chromatic Fourth: During Four Centuries of Music, p.69. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816563-3.

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