The Whole Tone Scale

The Whole Tone Scale

The whole-tone scale is a six-note scale, where each note is a tone (whole step) higher/lower than the next. There are two varieties:

Since the interval between every adjacent note is exactly the same, there is no tonic, i.e. there is no note which is harmonically or melodically more important than any other.

In fact, there is no hierarchy between the notes at all, so the scale creates atonal music. A whole-tone composition may begin or end on any note of the scale.

Notice also that the scale is symmetrical – the gap from D#-F is not really a diminished third, it is the same distance/type of interval as any other two adjacent notes (e.g. G-A) – a tone.

Modernist composers such as Debussy and Ravel often used the whole tone scale in their music. It is not normally found in earlier styles.

Try listening to some of Debussy’s whole-tone compositions, such as “Voiles”, from his 1910 book of piano preludes:

Other composers who exploited this scale are Glinka (e.g. in “Ruslan and Lyudmila”), Satie (“Parade”) and Dargomizhsky (“The Stone Guest”).

Busoni utilised the whole-tone scale in his piece Esercizio, for piano:

NB Busoni’s choice of accidentals may have been influenced by the purpose of the piece (a piano exercise). A simpler way to write the same thing would be:

ABRSM Grade 7 Music Theory : You might be asked to identify music based on the whole tone scale in the score reading questions (Q4 and Q5).

Trinity Grade 7 Music Theory: You might be asked to write out a whole tone scale, or write a composition based on one.