Wildest/most extreme harmony?

[Guido]

Here are a few examples "hiding in plain sight" among accepted masterpieces:

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, last movement, the second appearance of the Presto: the first chord contains every note of the D harmonic minor scale!

Chopin, Opus 28, Prelude #2 in A minor: the tonality never becomes clear at all until the last harmonic cadence.

Bruckner, Ninth Symphony, third movement: the final climax ends on another every-note-in-the-scale chord, completely unresolved.

Cheers for these! What do you mean by the last climax in the Bruckner? c.5mins before the end?

[jochanaan]

Cheers for these! What do you mean by the last climax in the Bruckner? c.5mins before the end?

I'd have to check timings, but that's probably the one.  It begins with the upper woodwinds playing the second theme slowly over a stalking bass and murmuring violins, builds long and slow to a restatement of the main theme in low brass, fff, and ends with that in-your-face dissonance followed by a dramatic pause; the music continues with one of Bruckner's typical bold yet inevitable tonal shifts.

[Ten thumbs]

You may also find the note clusters in D. Scarlatti's sonatas of interest. The ones I know are in K119 and K175 but there may be others. Both these sonatas are very upbeat classical style works.

[Superhorn]

  There's an amazing piano piece by Smetana ,which was later orchestrated by another composer called"Macbeth and the Witches".  You'd won't believe it's by a 19th century composer when you hear it.
  I have a recording on the Urania label, probably out of print by Vaclav Smetacek and the Prague sympnony(not the Czech Philharmonic.)  You have to hear this to believe it.

[Guido]

Ah yes Scarlatti of course - 175 is the one I know too - mad percussive stuff.

Am listening to the Smetana now - fun piece.

[greg]

Give it some time kid, one day you'll see the light. keep listening.

In other words, (cough)... no, I can't prove... (cough)... that Bach's harmony was more wild or extreme... (cough)... than the ones listed on this... (cough)

[greg]

this is not something that needs to be "proved", it's truth.  all i can to any doubters is keep listening, because as I said earlier ... everything "wild" here is rendered a pretty tame experience next to Bach's harmonic insight & profundity...

Yeah, and the world is flat just because I say it's so and it's truth.   
Of course, his music is great, and insightful, but not exactly "wild" harmonically in comparison to some of the examples on this thread, if that's what you mean to say (and the proof is in the scores).

[greg]

the examples posted are so earthbound & tame not as good-sounding compared to Bach's harmony.

So a cluster and a section of music that is played in several different keys is less tame than a standard Bach piece? 

...

Now, I would agree with this correction, which is what you obviously mean to say- but saying it's less tame makes absolutely no sense, unless you want to define 'tame' as something else.

[greg]

Yup, a much much MUCH tamer experience than what you get with Bach. Absolutely.

If you mean the experience itself and not the harmony, okay then...

[Scarpia]

Before 1900, there is a passage, I can't quite place it, perhaps in the sloe movement of Mozart's string quintet in D, that is almost atonal for a moment.  In Bach, there is the chorale that happens just after the Jesus' death in the St Matthew Passion that is rather extreme. 

[jochanaan]

Yeah, and the world is flat just because I say it's so and it's truth.   
Of course, his music is great, and insightful, but not exactly "wild" harmonically in comparison to some of the examples on this thread, if that's what you mean to say (and the proof is in the scores).

Oh, I don't know, some of it can get pretty wild.  Have you ever really listened to the harmonies in the D minor Toccata and Fugue? Or the tonal shifts in the first (C Major) prelude from The Well-Tempered Claver, Book I?

[greg]

Oh, I don't know, some of it can get pretty wild.  Have you ever really listened to the harmonies in the D minor Toccata and Fugue? Or the tonal shifts in the first (C Major) prelude from The Well-Tempered Claver, Book I?

Yeah, it can, but I've never heard him write in multiple keys at the same time. 

[listener]

And then there is the effect on "normal" tonality when ou use mean-tone tuning.   Buxtehude can startle when heard unexpectedly on a mean-tone organ (Loft 1090-1091, for instance).
And getting 20th century, the sounds from the tunings by Alois Haba can remind one of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards.

[Cato]

Parallel with Gesualdo: A good number of songs in Hugo Wolf's oeuvre qualify here!

See especially the Spanisches Liederbuch.  Perhaps not "wild" or "extreme" in a Mountain-Dew skateboard way     but...

[Ten thumbs]

I thought the idea of this thread was to report examples of wild or extreme harmonies not instances of profundity and harmonic insight. If James does not believe that other composers besides Bach had deep understanding of harmony then he has a lot to learn indeed.

[greg]

I thought the idea of this thread was to report examples of wild or extreme harmonies not instances of profundity and harmonic insight. If James does not believe that other composers besides Bach had deep understanding of harmony then he has a lot to learn indeed.

Definitely. Anyone who can read music can see that Bach, like many composers, wrote with the harmony of his time and did sometimes get much more imaginative- but it's not like his harmony was so extreme for his time that it was non-Baroque, or something.
Just study some of his scores, James, if you know how to read music.
Fanaticism can be fine, as long as it doesn't get nonsensical. While you're at it, just say that Bach was the greatest keyboardist who ever lived because he had insight to which notes he should struck while composing. 

[bwv 1080]

Bach's harmony is extreme compared to Handel, Rameau or any other Baroque composer (although Scarlatti is likely the closest).  You can find just about every standard jazz harmony somewhere in Bach's output as well as chromaticism equal to anything before Wagner

Compare Bach's Chaccone in Dm with Handel's Variations on the same theme to get an idea of Bach's greater sophistication

[greg]

It was advanced, but I'm not sure most of it would be appropriate for this thread... I was thinking more of the examples that were already given.

[prémont]

The most extreme harmony (in tonal music), I can recall at the moment, is the conclusion of
Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist BWV 671 (great organo pleno version) from Clavierübung III by J S Bach.

[Ten thumbs]

Whilst Bach's chromatic harmony was ideal for the late Baroque period, one would be deluded to suppose that such skill in harmony somehow disappeared after his death. Great harmonic complexity was swept away by the ethos of the new Classic era, which dwelt in the beauty of clear simplicity (relatively). Thus one of the hallmarks of the early Classical style is the use of a single harmony per bar. However, Mozart, Haydn and no doubt many others, were quite capable of harmonic ingenuity whenever they felt it appropriate (e.g in development passages). The next stage (the Romantic) sees the accompaniment assume a life of its own, challenging the theme and conflicting with it harmonically leading back to chromaticism, as in Wagner etc. 
One result of this is that a dissonance is likely to sound more extreme in a Classical work than in either Baroque or Romantic music.