Quartal and Quintal Harmony

Quartal And Quintal Harmony

In music, quartal harmony is the building of harmonic structures with a distinct preference for the intervals of the perfect fourth, the augmented fourth and the diminished fourth. Quintal harmony is harmonic structure preferring the perfect fifth, the augmented fifth and the diminished fifth. In modern tuning, the augmented fourth and the diminished fifth are identical and are often called the tritone because the interval between the two notes is three tones.

Use of the terms quartal and quintal arises from a contrast, compositional or perceptual, with traditional tertian harmonic constructions. Listeners familiar with music during and after the Common practice period perceive tonal music as that which uses major and minor chords and scales, wherein both the major third and minor third constitute the basic structural elements of the harmony.

Quintal harmony (the harmonic layering of fifths specifically) is a lesser-used term, and since the fifth is the inversion or complement of the fourth, it is usually considered indistinct from quartal harmony. Indeed, a circle of fifths can be arranged in fourths (G→C→F→B♭ etc. are fifths when played downwards and fourths when played upwards); this is the reason that modern theoreticians may speak of a "circle of fourths".