The Expansion of Chromatic Harmony
Around 1860 chromaticism stopped decorating and began to carry structure, leaving key only implied.
Related
Around 1860 chromaticism stopped being ornament and began to decide where a piece went, and whether it could stop at all.
Time and place
1857 to 1860, in Weimar, Zurich and Vienna. Wagner was writing Tristan und Isolde and the Wesendonck Lieder in Zurich; Liszt was writing the Faust Symphony in Weimar and turning Wagner's scenes into piano pieces.
What happened
Wagner made chromaticism grammatical rather than decorative. The Wesendonck Lieder tested the vocabulary first, and two of them became studies for Tristan. Liszt pushed augmented chords, chromatic passing motion and unresolved dominants into programme music at the same time. The so-called Tristan chord was not a new invention but a chord that refused its expected resolution; it makes the listener wait, and the waiting becomes the structure. Works of this period often go minutes without a clear cadence, holding a key by bass and repetition alone.
What changed
Harmony shifted from asking which key a chord belongs to toward asking where it is going. A composer could stay in a key for a long time without confirming it, and expectation was stretched, cheated and reused. The performer's difficulty changed as well, no longer intonation or speed but keeping direction through minutes of non-resolution. Schoenberg later took the vocabulary to its limit and tonality genuinely collapsed. Calling this period a chromatic crisis is fair because it changed writing, playing and listening at once.
Listen for the turn
Begin with Im Treibhaus from the Wesendonck Lieder, where the piano prelude keeps leaving the key and the voice enters without landing. Then the opening of the Mephisto Waltz, where augmented chords and chromatic scales disturb the dance; the steps remain but the floor moves. Finally Liszt's transcription of Lohengrin, where the same harmony on a piano loses none of its tension. All three date from 1857 to 1860 and show chromaticism becoming the air of a whole piece.
Related
This turn belongs to Romantic and connects Chromaticism, Tonality and 《特里斯坦》首演.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online, entries "Harmony" and "Wagner, Richard" — chromatic practice checked, not quoted
- Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford University Press) — harmonic narrative checked, not quoted
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.