Chords in Musical Practice

Although chords may appear in their pure, simple form, in musical practice the notes of the chord are frequently arranged in a wide variety of manners, depending on the style and effect the composer intends.

Chorale Style

The simplest style is often found in church music and was originally written for voices to sing. This "voicing" (arrangement style of the notes of the chords) is called Chorale style. In a pure chorale style, all of the notes move along at approximately the same rate, which is often referred to as a homophonic (all voices sounding at once). In this style, it is easy to recognize the chords. In chorale style, there are two common arrangements of the chord tones: open (or SATB choral voicing), where the notes are arranged evenly between the top and bottom notes, making it easy for each voice to sing their part. The second common arrangement is close (or keyboard voicing) where the top three notes are all within one octave, making it easy to play on keyboard instruments with the upper three notes played in the right hand and the bass line with the left. These are both shown in the following example:

Open / Chorale Voicing:

Close / Keyboard Voicing:

Composers of chorales frequently embellish the voices to make the music more interesting. In many cases, each voice is embellished so much that we can no longer call it homophonic, but must label it polyphonic (several separate, individual voices sounding at once). If all voices have a strong, even harmonic pulse as well, this may still be considered a chorale style, as the following example shows.

Polyphonic Chorale

We will examine the embellishing tones more closely in Section 16.

Arppegiated Style

In keyboard music written for non-sustaining instruments like the piano and harpsichord, or plucked instruments like guitar, the chorale style does not work as well, since the sound dies away quickly. Music written for these instruments (and also for larger ensembles) often uses a technique called arpeggiation, where one voice or instrument plays the individual notes of the chord in succession, rather than all at once. When played rapidly enough, they are still perceived as all part of the same chord. Listen to the following two examples of the same chords, one in chorale style, the other in an arpeggiated style:

Block Chord and Arpeggiated Styles

This style was very common in the piano music of W.A. Mozart and composers of the common practice period. One popular manner of arpeggiating the chord alternates between chord tones in the pattern of "bottom - top - middle - top" and is commonly refered to as an Alberti Bass.

Alberti Bass

Notice how you still are able to hear the same chords in the arpeggiated style, even though the whole chord is never actually played at once. When analyzing music of this style, one must group together all notes that form chords, and treat them as if they were sustaining. These notes are then rewritten in a block chord (chorale - keyboard) style for easier analysis, keeping them in their same pitch locations (i.e. the lowest note is still the "Bass" note). There may be an occasional embellishing tone in the arpeggiation, but you can usually recognize these by the fact that they are fewer and "don't fit" in with all the other notes. Embellishing tones are not included in this simplification. This process is called harmonic reduction:

Harmonic Reduction of Mozart: Sonata K545

After doing a harmonic reduction, it is much easier to see and label the chords. Once the chords have been identified and labeled, the harmonic function can be identified, which is the topic of the next section.

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