Major second

As a second ( less commonly short secondary, from Latin secunda = " the Second " ) is referred to in the music, the second stage of a diatonic scale and the interval between two adjacent stages of a diatonic scale ( for example, c -d). The complementary interval of the second is the seventh.

Variants

Note Example: Sekundintervalle

The second can occur in four versions:

• The major second, corresponding to a whole step (a) and
• The small seconds, which corresponds to a semitone ( b )
• The augmented second ( c ) ( Hiatus ) is rare, it is characteristic of the harmonic minor scale and the gypsy minor;
• The reduced second ( d) occurs only with the aid of sign and is an enharmonic change of the output Stones, that is both tones are acoustically identical in gleichstufiger mood, meet harmonious but different functions.

In the various systems of mood music can take very different frequency ratios the second. (See whole tone and semitone)

Small and large melodic seconds occur most frequently of all intervals, as well as the scales built on Sekundschritten. The major second is thereby used more often than the small second, which occurs usually only twice in a musical scale.

Importance in the composition

In contrapuntal compositions from the late 15th century often a Diskantklausel appears at the end with derivative action in the vocal line.

The second can be seen as an interval of emphasis and the tension that is often linked in the classical vocal music with pain, suffering, death and threat.

Examples of the second as a continuous, formative principle of composition:

• Claude Debussy (1862-1918), pour degrés chromatique, an etude for piano.
• Béla Bartók (1881-1945), Chromatic Invention of the microcosm

Melodic

The concatenation of several seconds results in ascending or descending scales, which as figures in compositions from the Renaissance to Romanticism as symbols have symbolic meaning or want to trigger emotions. A special role was played by the passus duriusculus.

Secondary - steps form the basic elements of ornamentation of the Baroque and Classical periods like trill, trill and mordant.

Harmoniously

The simultaneous sounding of two tones in Sekundabstand is perceived in the classical Western music culture as dissonant and small seconds as particularly unpleasant, they had in certain styles that resolve to consonant intervals always. In the four-note chord harmonies (from the late 17th century ), such as chord dissonances establish its own phenomenon and play a correspondingly distinctive role in the cadences.

With increasing resolution of the tonal system in modern music, the second loses its former emotional significance. Thus, several seconds are in modern music theory combined into clusters to avoid any association with the tonal system (see the works of Henry Cowell, Charles Ives and Krzysztof Penderecki ).

Clips

• Small second ( semitone): up C -Des? / i
• Downstream C -H? / i

• Up C-D? / i
• Down C B? / i