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In music, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbours by the interval of a whole step. There are only two whole tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales:

• {C, D, E, F♯, G♯, A♯, C}

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• {B, D♭, E♭, F, G, A, B}.

The whole tone scale has no leading tone and because all tones are the same distance apart, "no single tone stands out, [and] the scale creates a blurred, indistinct effect".^[1] This effect is especially emphasized by the fact that triads built on such scale tones are augmented. Indeed, one can play all six tones of a whole tone scale simply with two augmented triads whose roots are a major second apart. Since they are symmetrical, whole tone scales do not give a strong impression of the tonic or tonality.

The composer Olivier Messiaen called the whole tone scale his first mode of limited transposition. The composer and music theorist George Perle calls the whole tone scale interval cycle 2, or C2. Since there are only two possible whole tone scale positions (that is, the whole tone scale can be transposed only once), it is either C2⁰ or C2¹. For this reason, the whole tone scale is also maximally even and may be considered a generated collection.

Classical music

Use of the melodic whole tone scale can be traced at least as far back as Mozart, in his Musical Joke, for strings and horns. In the 19th century Russian composers went further with melodic and harmonic possibilities of the scale, often to depict the ominous; consider the endings of the overtures to Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila and Borodin's Prince Igor, the Commander's theme in Dargomyzhsky's The Stone Guest, and the opening theme of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

H.C. Colles names as the "childhood of the whole-tone scale" the music of Berlioz and Schubert in France and then Russians Glinka and Dargomijsky.^[2] Claude Debussy, who had been influenced by Russians, along with other Impressionist composers made extensive use of whole tone scales. The whole tone scale was also used by Alban Berg in his Violin Concerto, and by Béla Bartók in his Fifth String Quartet. Ferruccio Busoni used the whole tone scale in the right hand part of the "Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esercizio" of his An die Jugend.

Jazz harmony

The scale is also used extensively in modern jazz writing and jazz harmony. Wayne Shorter's composition "JuJu" features heavy use of the whole tone scale, and John Coltrane's One Down, One Up is built off two augmented chords arranged in the same simple structure as his earlier tune Impressions. However, these are only the most overt examples of the use of this scale in jazz. A vast number of jazz tunes, including many standards, use augmented chords and their corresponding scales as well, usually to create tension in turnarounds or as a substitute for a dominant seventh chord. Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk are two pianists who used the whole tone scale extensively and creatively.

Non-western music

The rāga Sahera in Hindustani classical music uses the same intervals as the whole tone scale. Ustad Mehdi Hassan has performed this rāga.

See also

• List of pieces which use the whole tone scale
• Pythagorean interval
• List of meantone intervals

Sources

External links

• The whole tone scale for piano