Evolution of "jazz" chords

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 22 Feb 2005 9:10 am

Hi folks,

I understand that a lot of the chromatic movement in jazz would've sounded lousy several hundred years ago before keyboard instruments were tuned to equal temperament. But I still don't understand why I don't hear more extended chords in pre 20th century "classical" music.

For example, why don't I hear more Major7th & Major9th chords? I'm sure guys like J.S. Bach & Mozart were aware of those chords --they're diatonic and just lying there on the keyboard-- but it seems like those guys would never resolve on a Major7th or Major9th chord. Did chords like that just not sound resolved enough in their eras?

I've always been attracted to Major7th & Major9th chords --even as a kid before I knew what they were. It seems like there's a sort of melancholy when you resolve with them. Is that just a conditioned response from hearing too much TV music as a kid or something? There's no reason these chords wouldn't have sounded just as pretty on keyboards from J.S. Bach's time. Would it just sound weird to him to resolve on a Major9th chord? If so, why? This question keeps me up at night sometimes!

Granted, I am no scholar of the great composers. I've mostly been listening to various forms of popular music my whole life. But I know there are Forumites out there who know a lot about Serious Music and I'm hoping they can shed some light on this topic.

OK another related question --this time about 6th chords:
When I hear a chord spelled 1-3-5-6, I instantly think of the swing era. It just sounds cool. Admittedtly, it's a weirder chord than a Major7th cuz of that whole-tone interval in there between the 5th & 6th degree, so maybe the Serious Composers of old didn't like it or even consider it an option. So were 6th chords born in the 20th century with the jazz age? Or can someone cite an earlier example of big fat 6th chords stomping their way through a composition?

Thanks for taking a look at these questions.

--Insomniac in L.A.

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 22 Feb 2005 10:28 am

There are plenty of major 7th and major ninth chords in JS Bach, and Mozart.
And they did use what we call 6th chords, but they call them minor 7ths. For example CEGA would be considered an A minor 7th in first inversion. The name is not important.

but it seems like those guys would never resolve on a Major7th or Major9th chord. Did chords like that just not sound resolved enough in their eras?

True, they would never end a phrase (cadence) on anything except a triad, major or minor, in root position. Another option is just the tonic note, no 5th, no 3rd. Anything else would sound as tho it need to resolve to something more stable.
There are a few cases of weird endings; for example Chopin ended his F major prelude on a F 7th chord (holding F,A,C,E flat).

Dan Sawyer · Post by **Dan Sawyer** » 22 Feb 2005 10:43 am

Those extended chords were actually considered dissonant, i.e. not pretty sounding. You are right about the swing era and 6th chords. But 6th chords are not "weirder" than major 7ths. They are really less dissonant than major 7th chords. In popular music, 6th chords became popular before major 7th chords. (This applies to major and minor 6th chords.)

You said; "I understand that a lot of the chromatic movement in jazz would've sounded lousy several hundred years ago before keyboard instruments were tuned to equal temperament."
As far as development of the piano and tempered tuning, that has nothing to do with it. The chords you mention will sound better played by a good trombone section than they ever will by a guitar or piano. Of course a steel guitar can also sound that good too.

(hi Ernest)[This message was edited by Dan Sawyer on 22 February 2005 at 10:45 AM.]

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 22 Feb 2005 11:39 am

One of the major harmonic stumbling blocks relative to these jazz chords was the church...
for centuries the tri-tone or flat 5 interval was banned as "the devils interval".

We know it from police and other sirens... and from jazz passing chords.

But Bach and many others could only experiment with them in secure privacy, because the church would call it heresy, or some such.

Only after this paranoia was ended was the intervals for these passing chords allow do be fully explored. But even in the life times of some forumites, these chords were still very much frowned on, and un-godly, if not the deveils playthings.

go figure!

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 22 Feb 2005 1:09 pm

The evolution of jazz chords is generally considered to have come about by the mixing of the West African pentatonic scale and the Western European seven-note scale (septatonic?) by African-Americans. African music included the "blue notes," the flatted 3rd, 5th and 7th. Because of the flatted 3rd, whites originally heard this music as minor music. African-Americans exposed to the European major and minor scales adapted by forcing songs into a Western minor or major mode for white listeners. But with more freedom to express themselves they eventually stopped equivocating and settled into full blown pentatonic blues and gospel sounds. Nevertheless, these New World sounds incorporated European sounds and were no longer purely African. Likewise, white musicians incoporate the blue notes and forever changed white music. Improv jazz not only used these hybrid sounds, but was open to novel sounds and loved to incorporate "mistakes" into the music. Thus, notes that were not either from the standard European harmony or the African were discovered and made popular. I think major 7ths, 9ths and 6ths came in that way. The American public came to expect new sounds in popular music. The 6th chord became so popular in its day that Casey Jones, the legendary railroad engineer is said to have had his steam whistle play a 6th chord, and this lonesome train whistle sound was incorporated into bluegrass and country. At about the same time as jazz developed, European classical musicians were tiring of the standard Western European harmonies and were experimenting with new sounds, such as diminished, augmenteds, suspended and diatonic sounds. While these sounds may have appeared previously in classical music, they were as brief mood passages or passing chords, and were not as prominent. Dissonance was countenanced only briefly in previous classical music, but was embraced enthusiastically in jazz and modern classical music. Still, listeners tend to like dissonance less than the musicians, who get bored with simple harmonies. That's what it all looks like to me anyway. It's hard to remember back before I was born.

Rick Schmidt · Post by **Rick Schmidt** » 22 Feb 2005 8:36 pm

great posts guys! So is it safe to assume that dom 7's were never considered the tonic of any progressions until the blues came along?

Bob Markison · Post by **Bob Markison** » 22 Feb 2005 10:47 pm

Nice thread. The way I see it, the "trajectory" of the jazz chord was initially an amalgam of blues dominant sevenths and Chopin and Liszt sevenths, 9ths, 11ths etc. Few will admit the debt jazz owes to the European masters. Ellington and Strayhorn worked elegant soul into the 7th chords, Bill Evans went into truly profound voicings, and Parker and Gillespie learned to live at warp speed by building very interesting solos in the "ether" of the 9ths, 11ths and thirteenths with a generous peppering of minor 7b5ths. Coltrane was intoxicated by the cyclical movement of 7ths - and many of his were major 7ths (Giant Steps = BbMaj7 Abm7 Db7 GbMaj7 Em7 A7 DMaj7 Abm7 Db7 GbMaj7 Gm7 C7). The 6th chord is the split personality connector that lives 6th and minor 7th lives, and permitted Bob Wills' bands to get eclectic. All the raw materials ran through the hands of the masters - documented in detail by Bach in Art of the Fugue in the last year of his life (1750), but it took all sorts of daring improvisers to make it all swing by combined use of a full pallet of 7ths and truly swinging melodic 8th notes. We are so incredibly lucky to have access to such an amazingly broad referential system of recorded and live music. A side-by-side listen to Bach's Contrapuntus and Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan on the Two of A Mind album tells a lot of the story.

Bob Markison · Post by **Bob Markison** » 22 Feb 2005 10:48 pm

(Contrapunctus)

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 23 Feb 2005 6:22 am

As soon as I read your post I started thinking of Bach's Partitas and Sonatas for solo violin. He'd write a series of chord tones, then change one tone to alter the chord to the next chord in the cycle of fifths, or to a relative minor, or a 6th chord, and keep changing one note at a time until he'd snuck out the side door somewhere. I wonder if it might have been his own sly way of sneaking a few "devil notes" past the church ladies?

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 23 Feb 2005 8:50 am

Great stuff, folks!

Earnest, you wrote

And they did use what we call 6th chords, but they call them minor 7ths. For example CEGA would be considered an A minor 7th in first inversion. The name is not important.

So that's with a C being played in the bass as the root?

-GV[This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 23 February 2005 at 08:51 AM.]

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 23 Feb 2005 8:57 am

Yes, it's hard to imagine there is any jazz chord that was not previously used somewhere in European classical music. But they were used as transitions to be resolved; whereas, jazz put them up front and emphasized them. In the 20th century jazz and classical music came together and embraced dissonance. What's funny to me is that a major 7th or 9th played next to a 1 or 8 sounds dissonant. But when the tonic and the dissonant note are in different octaves, there is a soft mellow sound to it.

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 23 Feb 2005 9:50 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>for centuries the tri-tone or flat 5 interval was banned as "the devils interval".
............But Bach and many others could only experiment with them in secure privacy, because the church would call it heresy, or some such.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>On the contrary, Bach's music has lots of chords with tritones. It's in every dominant seventh chord, every diminished and half-diminised etc etc.
If there ever was a time when people avoided chords containing a tritone, it was long before Bach.
However there is one sense in which the tritone was avoided: the interval between two subsequent notes in a melody would rarely jump by a tritone. It does happen in pop music tho; e.g. between bar 5 to 6 of Kern's "All The Things You Are".

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 23 Feb 2005 9:56 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And they did use what we call 6th chords, but they call them minor 7ths. For example CEGA would be considered an A minor 7th in first inversion. The name is not important.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that's with a C being played in the bass as the root?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>No, in this example the third, not the root, is in the bass.

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 23 Feb 2005 10:20 am

OK EB I guess what I'm asking is this: are there examples of classical guys using CEGA as a tonic in the key of C major?

I don't feel CEGA "counts" as a 6th chord if it's just acting as an inversion of Amin7. -GV

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 23 Feb 2005 5:22 pm

I never thought of Bach or Mozart as lacking in jazz chords. I always thought they were the source of those chords.

I think that the idea of resolving to a major 7th is pretty much 20th century, though. Until then, that kind of dissonance was considered unresolved. Audiences wanted to hear a nice strong triad at the end of a piece. All chords were acceptable along the way to the resolution, though. That's been true for a very long time.

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Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 23 Feb 2005 9:25 pm

are there examples of classical guys using CEGA as a tonic in the key of C major?

No.

.... ok, somebody find an exception
If Chopin can end on F7, I'm sure somebody would end on a 6th chord just to be different

Bruce Clarke · Post by **Bruce Clarke** » 24 Feb 2005 1:44 pm

So that I know what you guys are writing about, could somebody define a "Jazz chord"?

Greg Vincent · Post by **Greg Vincent** » 24 Feb 2005 2:20 pm

So that I know what you guys are writing about, could somebody define a "Jazz chord"?

There's really no such thing, Bruce, which is why you'll notice that I put the term in quotes when I named this thread. It's really a non-term; I just hoped folks would go along with me on that one.

I gave a few examples though. Mostly I guess I'm talking about chords that take at least 4 or 5 notes to spell.

But we've kind of established here that a sixth chord like CEGA really IS a jazz chord, having come into widespread use as a root chord only with the invention of jazz in the 20th century.

Pretty cool!

-GV [This message was edited by Greg Vincent on 24 February 2005 at 02:23 PM.]