Chopin Piano Tutorial Etude Op. 25 No.10 The Whole-Tone Scale
Chopin Étude Op. 25 No. 10 Piano Tutorial – The Whole-Tone Scale
A Pianist's Thoughts
Chopin was remarkably forward-looking for his time. In the opening four bars of this Étude Op. 25 No. 10, the main notes form a whole-tone scale — something particularly striking in a piece written in the 1830s.
By “main notes”, I mean the notes around which the others seem to hang — the notes that are given a little more prominence or accent. These are the notes marked in green on this particular score. They are also the notes I find myself singing in my head as I play, creating an interesting offbeat rhythmic pattern in places.
It's a small detail, but I find it fascinating how this underlying whole-tone pattern contributes to the character of the music.
There is actually another piece by Chopin which uses a whole-tone scale in a much more obvious way than here. Does anyone know which one? If you know, let me know in the comments.
What Is a Whole-Tone Scale?
For anyone who doesn't know, a whole-tone scale is made entirely of whole tones (two semitones), giving it six different notes within the octave.
In this example, the notes are F♯, G♯, A♯, B♯, D and E. Each note is a whole tone away from the next.
Because there are no semitones within the scale, whole-tone scales have a distinctive, floating quality. They can create a dreamy, ambiguous or almost trance-like effect, and they are also closely connected to the augmented chord, which can be constructed from the notes of a whole-tone scale.
The whole-tone scale later became particularly associated with the music of the French Impressionist composers, especially Debussy. Finding this colour in Chopin, writing in the 1830s, is one of the many things that makes his music so fascinating to explore.
Want to understand the theory behind passages like this?
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