A chromatic fourth is a
melody or melodic fragment spanning a
perfect fourth with all or almost all
chromatic intervals filled in. The quintessential example is in
D minor with the tonic and dominant notes as boundaries: The chromatic fourth was first used in the
madrigals of the 16th Century. In the Baroque,
Johann Sebastian Bach used it in his choral as well as his instrumental music, in the
Well-Tempered Clavier, for example (the chromatic fourth is indicated by a red bracket): In operas of the Baroque and Classical, the chromatic fourth was often used in the bass and for woeful arias, often being called a "lament bass." In the penultimate pages of the first movement of
Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony, the repetitions of the chromatic fourth in the cellos and basses stir up a sense of inevitable tragedy.
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