[PW] Re: music terms

[Nina Gilbert]

Michael Sheehan asks,

I'm looking to complete the 1 - 10 sequence (actually, 2 - 10) for 
interval/chord names. I have the ones listed below, culled from music sites on the 
internet. Is it possible to fill in the missing items?   Any corrections?   
Documentation?      Thanks in advance.

 2.   secundal
 3.   tertian
 4.   quartal or quatral (?)
 5.   quintal
 6.   sextal
 7.   septal
 8.   octal
 9.
10.



Those are not names of intervals and chords, but they are valid musical terms that refer to the  intervals that harmonies are based on.  A piece based on major and minor chords and sevenths has "tertian" harmonies, because those chords are built by stacking thirds.  Some early-twentieth-century and jazz styles build their harmonies out of stacks of fourths, and that's called quartal harmony.  Skriabin and Copland (especially Skriabin) wrote lots of music based on quartal harmonies.  Music based on stacks of fifths (not just chords with fifths in them) is quintal.  Tone clusters (stacks of adjacent notes) are secundal.  I'm not sure if I've ever seen the terms "sextal," "septal," or "octal."  They could be hypothetical, as on this Web page:  http://www.afn.org/~afn54096/mus-theor/Intro.html
-- but "octal" doesn't make sense in any case.

I hope this helps!

Nina Gilbert


------------------------------------------------
Nina Gilbert (former music professor)
ninagilbert at yahoo.com
Education and Community Programs Manager
Boston Lyric Opera