Polytonality
Polytonality (also polyharmony (Cole and Schwartz
2012)) is the musical use of more than one key
simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two dif-
ferent keys at the same time. Polyvalence is the use of
more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at
the same time (Leeuw 2005, 87).
Example of C and F sharp major chords together in Stravinskys
Petrushka (see: Petrushka chord). Play
Some examples of bitonality superimpose fully
harmonized sections of music in dierent keys.
1 History
Mozart used polytonality in his A Musical Joke for comic eect.
Play
1.1 In traditional music
Lithuanian traditional singing style sutartines is based on
polytonality. A typical sutartines song is based on a six-
bar melody, where the rst three bars contains melody
based on the notes of the triad of a major key (for ex-
ample, in G major), and the next three bars is based on
another key, always a major second higher or lower (for
example, in A major). This six-bar melody is performed
as a canon, and repetition starts from the fourth bar. As
1
a result, parts are constantly singing in dierent tonal-
ity (key) simultaneously (in G and in A) (Jordania 2006,
11920; Rainait-Vyinien 2006). As a traditional
style, sutartines disappeared in Lithuanian villages by the
rst decades of the 20th century, but later became a na-
tional musical symbol of Lithuanian music (Anon. 2010).
Tribes throughout Indiaincluding the Kuravan of Ker-
ala, the Jaunsari of Uttar Pradesh, the Gond, the Santal,
and the Mundaalso use bitonality, in responsorial song
(Babiracki 1991, 76).
1.2 In classical music
Duetto II from Clavier-bung III
by J.S.Bach
In J.S.Bach's Clavier-bung III, there is a two-part pas-
sage where, according to Scholes (1970, 44849): It
will be seen that this is a canon at the fourth below; as
it is a strict canon, all the intervals of the leading 'voice'
are exactly imitated by the following 'voice', and since
the key of the leading part is D minor modulating to G
minor, that of the following part is necessarily A minor
modulating to D minor. Here, then, we have a case of
polytonality, but Bach has so adjusted his progressions
(by the choice at the critical moment of notes common to
two keys) that while the right hand is doubtless quite un-
der the impression that the piece is in D minor, etc., and
the left hand that it is in A minor, etc., the listener feels
that the whole thing is homogeneous in key, though rather
uctuating from moment to moment. In other words,
Bach is trying to make the best of both worldsthe ho-
motonal one of his own day and (prophetically) the poly-
tonal one of a couple of centuries later. Another early
use of polytonality occurs in the classical period in the -
nale of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's composition A Mu-
sical Joke, which he deliberately ends with the violins,
violas and horns playing in four discordant keys simul-
taneously. However, it was not featured prominently in
non-programmatic contexts until the twentieth century,
particularly in the work of Charles Ives (Psalm 67, c.
18981902), Bla Bartk (Fourteen Bagatelles, op. 6,
1908), and Stravinsky (Petrushka, 1911) (Whittall 2001).
2 2 POLYTONALITY AND POLYCHORDS

Ives claimed that he learned the technique of polytonal-

ity from his father, who taught him to sing popular songs
in one key while harmonizing them in another (Crawford
2001, 503).
Although it is only used in one section and intended to
represent drunken soldiers, there is an early example of
polytonality in Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's short com-
position Battalia, written in 1673 (Ryker 2005).
Stravinskys The Rite of Spring is widely credited with
Separate chords within an extended chord (Marquis 1964, ). Play
popularizing bitonality, and contemporary writers such as
Casella (1924) describe him as progenitor of the tech-
nique: the rst work presenting polytonality in typi- ity, but they may not be explained as a single tertian
cal completenessnot merely in the guise of a more or chord. The Petrushka chord is an example of a poly-
less happy 'experiment', but responding throughout to chord (Ellenberger 2005, 20). This is the norm in jazz,
the demands of expressionis beyond all question the for example, which makes frequent use of extended and
grandiose Le Sacre du Printemps of Stravinsky (1913)" polychordal harmonies without any intended suggestion
(Casella 1924, 164). of multiple keys.
Bartks Playsong demonstrates easily perceivable
bitonality through the harmonic motion of each key
... [being] relatively uncomplicated and very diatonic 2.1 Polyvalency
(Kostka and Payne 1995, 495). Here, the duality of key
featured is A minor and C minor: The following passage, taken from Beethoven's Piano
Sonata in E, Op. 81a (Les Adieux), suggests clashes
between tonic and dominant harmonies in the same key
(Marquis 1964, ).

Example of polytonality or extended tonality from Milhauds

Saudades do Brasil (1920) Play , right hand in B major and
left hand in G major, or both hands in extended G major (Leeuw
2005, 87). Bitonality suggested in Beethoven (Marquis 1964, ). Play

Other polytonal composers inuenced by Stravinsky in- Leeuw points to Beethovens use of the clash between
clude those in the French group, Les Six, particularly tonic and dominant, such as in his Third Symphony, as
Darius Milhaud, as well as Americans such as Aaron polyvalency rather than bitonality, with polyvalency be-
Copland (Marquis 1964, ). ing, the telescoping of diverse functions that should re-
Benjamin Britten used bi- and polytonality in his operas, ally occur in succession to one another (Leeuw 2006, 87).
as well as enharmonic relationships, for example to sig-
nify the conict between Claggart (F minor) and Billy
(E major) in Billy Budd (note the shared enharmonically
equivalent G/A) (Seymour 2007, 14142) or to express
the main characters maladjustment in Peter Grimes
(White 1970, 119).

Polyvalency in Beethoven Play (Leeuw 2006, 88).

2 Polytonality and polychords
Polytonality requires the presentation of simultaneous 2.2 Polymodality
key-centers. The term "polychord" describes chords that
can be constructed by superimposing multiple familiar Passages of music, such as Poulenc's Mouvements Per-
tonal sonorities. For example, familiar ninth, eleventh,
petuels, I., may be misinterpreted as polytonal rather than
and thirteenth chords can be built from or decomposed polymodal. In this case, two scales are recognizable but
into separate chords: are assimilated through the common tonic (B) (Vincent
Thus polychords do not necessarily suggest polytonal- 1951, 272).
3.1 Octatonicism
Polyvalency in Stravinskys Mass Play (Leeuw 2006, 88).
2.3 Polyscalarity
Polyscalarity is dened as the simultaneous use of sage from Petrushka, cited above, uses only notes drawn
musical objects which clearly suggest dierent source- from the C octatonic collection C-C-D-E-F-G-A-A.
collections (Tymoczko 2002, 83). Specically in ref-
erence to Stravinskys music, Tymoczko uses the term
polyscalarity out of deference to terminological sensibil- 4 See also
ities (Tymoczko 2002, 85). In other words, the term is
meant to avoid any implication that the listener can per-
ceive two keys at once. Though Tymoczko believes that
polytonality is perceivable, he believes polyscalarity is
better suited to describe Stravinskys music. This term is
also used as a response to Van den Toorns analysis against
polytonality. Van den Toorn, in an attempt to dismiss
polytonal analysis used a monoscalar approach to analyze
the music with the octatonic scale. However, Tymoczko
states that this was problematic in that it does not resolve
all instances of multiple interactions between scales and
chords. Moreover, Tymoczko quotes Stravinskys claim
that the music of Petrouchka's second tableau was con-
ceived in two keys (Tymoczko 2002, 85). Polyscalarity 5 Sources
is then a term encompassing multiscalar superimpositions
and cases which give a dierent explanation than the oc-
tatonic scale.
3 Challenges
Some music theorists, including Milton Babbitt and Paul
Hindemith have questioned whether polytonality is a use-
ful or meaningful notion or viable auditory possibility
(Baker 1983, 163). Babbitt called polytonality a self-
contradictory expression which, if it is to possess any
meaning at all, can only be used as a label to desig-
nate a certain degree of expansion of the individual el-
ements of a well-dened harmonic or voice-leading unit
(Babbitt 1949, 380). Other theorists to question or reject
polytonality include Allen Forte and Benjamin Boretz,
who hold that the notion involves logical incoherence
(Tymoczko 2002, 84).
Other theorists, such as Dmitri Tymoczko, respond that
the notion of tonality is a psychological, not a logical
notion (Tymoczko 2002, 84). Furthermore, Tymoczko
argues that two separate key-areas can, at least at a rudi-
3
mentary level, be heard at one and the same time: for
example, when listening to two dierent pieces played
by two dierent instruments in two areas of a room
(Tymoczko 2002, 84).
3.1 Octatonicism
Some critics of the notion of polytonality, such as Pieter
van den Toorn, argue that the octatonic scale accounts in
concrete pitch-relational terms for the qualities of clash-
ing, opposition, stasis, polarity, and superimpo-
sition found in Stravinskys music and, far from negating
them, explains these qualities on a deeper level (Van den
Toorn and Tymoczko 2003, 179). For example, the pas-
List of polytonal pieces
Bimodality
Polymodal chromaticism
Elektra chord
Bridge chord
Woody Shaw
Anon. 2010. Sutartins, Lithuanian Multipart
Songs. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
website (accessed 29 January 2016).
Babbitt, Milton (1949). The String Quartets of
Bartk. Musical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (July): 377
85.
Beach, David (1983). Aspects of Schenkerian The-
ory. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
ISBN 978-0-300-02800-3.
Casella, Alfred (1924). Tone Problems of Today.
Musical Quarterly 10:15971.
Cole, Richard, and Ed Schwartz, eds. (2012).
Polyharmony. Virginia Tech Multimedia Music
Dictionary. Virginia Tech. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
Crawford, Richard (2001). Americas Musical Life:
A History. New York: W. W. Norton..
Ellenberger, Kurt (2005). Materials and Concepts in
Jazz Improvisation (fth ed.). Grand Rapids: Key-
tone. ISBN 0-9709811-3-9.
4 6 FURTHER READING

Hindemith, Paul (194142). The Craft of Musical
Composition, vols. 1 and 2, translated by Arthur
Mendel and Otto Ortmann. New York: Associated
Music Publishers; London: Schott & Co. Original
German edition as Unterweisung im Tonsatz. 3 vols.
Mainz, B. Schotts Shne, 193770.
The Sounds of Stravinsky. Music Theory Spectrum
25, no. 1 (Spring): 167202.
Vincent, John (1951). The Diatonic Modes in Mod-
ern Music. University of California Publications in
Music 4. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Jordania, Joseph (2006). Who Asked the First Ques-
tion?. Logos..
Kostka, Stefan M., and Dorothy Payne (1995).
Tonal Harmony, with an Introduction to Twentieth-
Century Music, third edition, consulting editor in
music, Allan W. Schindler. New York: McGraw-
Hill Inc. ISBN 978-0-07-035874-4.
Leeuw, Ton de (2005). Music of the Twentieth Cen-
tury: A Study of Its Elements and Structure, fore-
word by Rokus De Groot, translated by Stephen
Taylor. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
ISBN 978-90-5356-765-4. Translated from Muziek
van de twintigste eeuw: een onderzoek naar haar
elementen en structuur, met 111 muziekvoorbeelden
en 7 guren. Utrecht: A. Oosthoeks Uitg. Mij.,
1964 (third printing, Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltema &
Holkema, 1977, ISBN 9789031302444).
6 Further reading
Marquis, G. Welton (1964). Twentieth Century Mu-
sic Idioms. Englewood Clis, New Jersey: Prentice-
Hall, Inc.
Nettl, Bruno (1991). Comparative Musicology and
Anthropology of Music Essays on the History of
Ethnomusicology. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. ISBN 978-0-226-57409-7.
White, Eric Walter (1970). Benjamin Britten His
Life and Operas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni-
versity of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-
01679-8.
Whittall, Arnold (2001). Bitonality. The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second
edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell.
London: Macmillan Publishers.
Wilson, Carl (1997). Comments by Carl Wilson.
The Pet Sounds Sessions (Booklet). The Beach Boys.
Capitol Records.
Wilson, Paul (1992). The Music of Bla Bartk.
ISBN 978-0-300-05111-7.
Reti, Rudolph (1978). Tonality, Atonality, Pan-
tonality A Study of Some Trends in Twentieth Cen-
tury Music. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN
978-0-313-20478-4.

Rainait-Vyinien, Daiva (2006). The Lithua-

nian Archaic Polyphonic Chant Sutartin", trans-
lated by E. Novickas. Lituanus 52, no. 2: 26-39.
ISSN 0024-5089.

Ryker, Harrison (2005). Invited paper no. 5, Soft

and Sweet, Loud and Sour: Looking Back on Poly-
tonality. In New Music in China and The C.C. Liu
Collection at the University of Hong Kong, 4748.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005,
ISBN 978-96-2209-772-8.

Scholes, Percy A. (1970). Harmony. The Oxford

Companion to Music. London: Oxford University
Press.

Seymour, Claire (2007). The Operas of Benjamin

Britten Expression and Evasion. Boydell Press.
ISBN 978-1-84383-314-7.

Tymoczko, Dmitri (2002). Stravinsky and the Oc-

tatonic: A Reconsideration. Music Theory Spec-
trum 24, no. 1:68102.

Van den Toorn, Pieter C., and Dmitri Tymoczko

(2003). Colloquy: Stravinsky and the Octatonic:
 5

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