Quartal Harmony

Hi

I often read about composers who use quartal harmonies, but i've never found a

guide on how to use them. I know that quartal harmony means, using chords made up of stacked perfect 4ths, like C F Bb. But how them I use them? How to I organize chord progressions of that kind, what kind of voice leading should i

use. Which scales should one use with quartal harmonies, and how do I modulate using them?

greetings DAI

They don't have to be perfect fourths.

and it's up to you to find a way of using them.

there's no "this is the way to write quartal harmony" rulebook

If you'd like to be bored to tears you can read Hindemith's book.*

*also works for insomnia

Quartal piano, demo

Quartal harmony is not just one thing, and many different composers have used it in many different ways. In my opinion, the best thing to do is just look for music that uses quartal harmony and look at how these composers have done it. Schoenberg, Ives, Hindemith, Dello Joio, Webern, Debussy, Bartok, they've all used quartal harmony in one way or the other, and as robin said it's also used in jazz (and latin american music), again in a completely different way.

So it's all up to you. I think Persichetti's book mentions quartal harmony a little bit, and so does Smith Brindle's book on composition, but they don't really get into it too deeply.

Again, if you're going to go away from "tonality" in the 19th century common-practice way (because a piece can use quartal harmony and still be tonal, just as a piece can use a 12-tone row and still be tonal), then you better get used to not using terms such as "voice-leading" or "chord-progressions", "scales", "modulation" etc, because these terms have very specific meanings in functional, common-practice tonal harmony, not all of which apply in the same way to other harmonic principles.

Study Debussy and his piano etudes. They're invaluable to seeing how to deal with music in more linear terms (modes, points of closure/conclusion etc) rather than verticalities (chords and chord progressions). Also, the first movement of his String Quartet is an fantastic example (you can find all these scores on IMSLP, and you can find recordings of his etudes on pianosociety.com) (also, I have uploaded some notes from an analysis class on the string quartet movement on IMSLP, so that might be helpful).

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/tiny-quartal-harmony-fugue-16270.html

I can only really give this example of what I've done, but it's really more of a concept as actual "quartal harmony" isn't to be understood as a specific system like functional harmony and such, but as a principle of interval and voice movement. It is quite free beyond that, too.