Petrushka chord

Infobox Chord| chord_name=Petrushka chord
first_interval=root
second_interval=diminished third
third_interval=minor third
fourth_interval=diminished fifth
fifth_interval=minor sixth
sixth_interval=diminished seventh

The Petrushka chord is a recurring polytonic device used in Igor Stravinsky's ballet "Petrushka" and in later music. The very dissonant chord is most associated with the emotions of shock or horrorFact|date=January 2008.

tructure

The Petrushka chord is not an individual chordFact|date=January 2008, but rather a succession of intervals. It is defined as two simultaneous major triad arpeggios separated by a tritone. The lower voice is under first inversion. In "Petrushka" Stravinsky used C Major on top of F-sharp Major (here presented in first inversion):

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The device uses tones that, together, make up most of the octatonic scale. The chords may be considered to contradict each other because of the tritone relationship: "Any tendency for a tonality to emerge may be avoided by introducing a note three whole tones distant from the key note of that tonality." [cite book
last = Brindle
first = Reginald Smith
authorlink = Reginald Smith Brindle
title = Serial Composition
publisher = Oxford University Press
year = 1966
isbn = 0-19-311906-4
url = http://books.google.com/books?id=gvNLXHpusw8C
pages = 66 ]

Petrushka

Stravinsky used the chord repeatedly throughout the ballet "Petrushka" to represent the puppet and the puppet's mocking of the crowd at the Shrovetide Fair.

Other uses

Franz Liszt used chords a tritone apart in his "Malediction Concerto" (Walser 1998, p.215).

Maurice Ravel uses this chord in his piano work "Jeux D'eau" to create flourishing, water-like sounds that characterize the piece. In his article "Ravel's 'Russian' Period: Octatonicism in His Early Works, 1893-1908", Steven Baur notes that "Jeux d'eau" was composed in 1901, ten years before Stravinsky composed "Petrushka" (1911), suggesting that Stravinsky may have learned the trick from Ravel. Stravinsky heard "Jeux d'eau" and several other works by Ravel no later then 1907 at the "Evenings for Contemporary Music" program. (See "Journal of the American Musicological Society" 52 (1999), 531-592.

Leonard Bernstein ends the popular musical "West Side Story" with a C Major chord in the upper voices, and gives the basses an F#, which could be seen to imply the Petrushka chord.

John Williams uses it in various parts of his score for the "Star Wars" Trilogy, an example being the frequent use of major triads in the brass in chromatic intervals of a minor third (two minor thirds forming a tritone) such as G major and D flat major.

ee also

*Mystic chord
*Tristan chord
*Elektra chord

ources

Footnotes

Notations

*Walser, Robert (1998). "Keeping Time : Readings in Jazz History". ISBN 0-19-509173-6.