Late-Romantic Chromaticism

Introduction: Chromaticism Everywhere

By the second half of the nineteenth century, composers such as Wagner, Liszt, Franck, Wolf, Mahler, and Richard Strauss were pushing chromaticism to its limits. Keys still exist, but tonics are delayed, avoided, or reached only at the very end; chords arise from voices sliding by half step as much as from functional progressions; and some sonorities are deliberately ambiguous, pointing toward several keys at once. This chapter introduces the main tools for analyzing that music.

Click any example to hear it.

The Common-Tone Diminished Seventh

A common-tone diminished seventh (ct°⁷) is a fully diminished seventh chord that shares one note with the chord it embellishes, usually the root, while its other notes act as chromatic neighbors. It has no dominant function: it doesn't resolve to a new chord but decorates the one it came from. Its most common use is to embellish I (or V), often over a tonic pedal.

• To build ct°⁷ on a major triad, stack root, ♯2, ♯4, 6 above the embellished chord's root. In C: C – D♯ – F♯ – A. For G: G – A♯ – C♯ – E.
• In voice leading, the third falls by half step and returns (E–D♯–E), the fifth falls by half step or rises by step and returns (G–F♯–G, G–A–G), and the root holds.
• Spell it so its notes resolve logically: D♯ (not E♭) leads up to E; F♯ (not G♭) leads up to G.

Analysts label the chord ct°⁷ (or CT°7) rather than giving it a Roman numeral, because it has no root-progression function. Compare vii°⁷/V, which does lead to V: the same notes can do either job, and context decides.

Half-Diminished Sevenths and the Tristan Chord

The most famous chord in nineteenth-century music opens Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1859). After a rising sixth and a chromatic descent, the orchestra sounds F–B–D♯–G♯, which then moves to E–D–G♯–B, a dominant seventh on E, and stops. The tonic (A minor) never arrives.

Why is it so famous? Because it's ambiguous. Heard in isolation, F–B–D♯–G♯ is an F half-diminished seventh (F–A♭–C♭–E♭, respelled). In context, several readings compete:

• A French augmented sixth in A minor (F–B–D♯–A) whose A is displaced by the G♯ appoggiatura; it resolves to V⁷.
• A half-diminished seventh functioning as a chromatic predominant (iiø⁷-like) in A minor.
• A voice-leading chord: every voice moves by half or whole step into E⁷, so the chord may be best explained by its motion rather than by a root.

Wagner then refuses to resolve E⁷ to A minor, and the pattern repeats, sequenced up a minor third. The result is a famous picture of unfulfilled longing, created with tonal syntax that withholds its goal.

Voice-Leading Chords and Chromatic Sequences

In much late-Romantic music, chords are best understood as the products of chromatic voice leading: each voice moves by half step (or holds), and whatever chord results is passed through on the way somewhere else. A classic example is a chain of dominant sevenths whose roots descend by fifth: the seventh of each chord falls by half step to the third of the next, and the third falls by half step to become the next seventh.

Other voice-leading patterns are equally common: chromatic passing chords between two diatonic chords, a bass line descending chromatically under changing harmonies (the "lament bass"), and the omnibus, in which two outer voices move chromatically in contrary motion around a dominant seventh, producing a string of chords (V⁷, a minor six-four, an augmented sixth, V⁷ again) that all share the same voice-leading logic.

Equal Divisions of the Octave

Tonal music divides the octave unequally, by fifths and fourths. Late-Romantic composers increasingly divided it equally:

• By major thirds (three parts): C – E – A♭ – C. Liszt and Schubert move through these key areas, linked by chromatic mediants (Chapter 28).
• By minor thirds (four parts): C – E♭ – G♭ – A – C, the axis of the diminished seventh chord (Chapter 24). Any of its keys can be reached via a respelled vii°⁷.
• By tritones (two parts): C – F♯ – C, the tritone substitution relationship (Chapter 27).
• By whole steps (six parts): the whole-tone scale (Chapter 30).

Because these divisions are symmetrical, they weaken the sense of a single tonic: no point in the cycle is privileged. That's exactly why composers used them for passages of suspension, wandering, or transition.

Tonal Ambiguity and Directional Tonality

• Delayed tonic: a piece may begin away from its tonic (on a predominant or dominant) and establish the key only gradually.
• Avoided cadence: deceptive and evaded cadences pile up; the PAC is saved for the end, if it comes at all.
• Directional (progressive) tonality: the piece ends in a different key from the one it began in. Mahler's symphonies are famous examples.
• Two-key schemes: some pieces seem to balance two tonics (often a third apart), with neither clearly winning.

Try It: Chromatic Voice-Leading Lab

Summary

• The common-tone diminished seventh (root, ♯2, ♯4, 6 above the embellished chord) decorates I or V; it holds the common tone and moves its other voices by step.
• The Tristan chord (F–B–D♯–G♯) is a half-diminished sonority with several competing interpretations; it moves to E⁷, and the tonic is withheld.
• Voice-leading chords arise from chromatic motion; chains of dominant sevenths, chromatic passing chords, the lament bass, and the omnibus are common patterns.
• Equal divisions of the octave (major thirds, minor thirds, tritones, whole steps) weaken the pull of a single tonic.
• Late-Romantic tonality often delays, avoids, or changes its tonic (directional tonality).

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