IMSLP Forums

I'm a new person here, but I think this could be an interesting subject.

My favorite: (chord can go in any key, but I'll choose example) bdimM7. Exquisitely romantic, rather dissonant suspension that resolves to a fully diminished chord. Very often used in Russian romantic music. Spelled out example: B-D-F-A#.

The power chord:

"In music, a power chord (also fifth chord) is a chord consisting of only the root note of the chord and the fifth, usually played on electric guitar, and typically through an amplification process that imparts distortion. Power chords are a key element of many styles of rock music."

One of my favorites is a minor 9th chord, especially the spelling E-flat-B-flat-G-flat-B-flat-D-flat-F, like that found at rehearsal 15 in Ravel's Shéhérazade (no score on IMSLP as text under copyright in Canada). I find it especially moving and expressive, and at that section like a floodgate releasing a torrent of emotion.

A chord in Mann's Doktor Faustus makes a marvelous impression if played slowly and arpeggiated:
C - G - E - B-Flat - D - F - A - F-Sharp

The opening chord in Boulez's Pli selon pli without a doubt.

Could you provide a spelling for those of us without this score?

Anyone here heard of the Mystic chord, created by Scriabin?



It's almost 3 different tritones stacked on each other, but the top interval is only a perfect 4th.

Sure I've heard of that (Love Skrjabin)
The spelling at the opening of Prometheus is marvelous.
What's more the pity, Dahlhaus bends himself over backwards trying to "tonalize" it

from the lowest note: B - G - C# - E - A# [context is E major]
Mozart: Cosi fan tutte, Trio "Soave sia il vento", at the climax of the phrase "risponda ai nostri desir." How Mozart drives this harmony to a V-I cadence in E is quite magical. And speaking of magic, this chord (same key, same inversion) appears often in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream Overture,as well as in the Incidental Music pieces derived from it.

--Sixtus

Correct me if I'm wrong (having only seen the score once), but I believe the Pli selon pli chord contains all twelve notes, scorred for the bass instruments, as well as the percussion.

I don't know about you guys, but in all seriousness my favorite chord is just a plain G7 with the added 6, spelled from bottom to top G - D - F - B - E. The cadence created when the sixth moves down in whole steps to the C is one of my favorite resolutions. Wagner uses this in The Ring as a cadence for the sword motif:


The sword motif's final appearance, Siegfried's Trauermusik, is my favorite moment of all the operas.

The opening of Bach's Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54 is magical...although not really a chord.

Good ol' C Major (in the context of Bluebeard's Castle)

C - E - G - A (C-major with added sixth). This is famous as the last chord of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. And I don't think it's an accident that Berg closes his elegaic Violin Concerto with the same harmony, transposed to B-flat. The orchestration and spacing of both these endings is what lends them their luminous, and numinous, quality.

--Sixtus

A lot of Villa-Lobos is also characterized by the use of that chord, and other variations (C - G - E - B - E - A - D, for instance). It is one of the things that gives his music such a vivid feel.

And of course Messiaen is with that chord a lot - but Schumann is the earliest to use that chord frequently.

Root-5th-octave are also the first three pitches of Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra (explicitly sounded by the trumpet) and they make up the full chord played at the fff ending of the first half of the piece. So it was a Nietzschean power chord way before rock music.

--Sixtus