The Magic Chord is a chord and

installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

(1984) created by

La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...

, consisting of the pitches E, F, A, B, D, E, G, and A, in ascending order and used in works including his ''

The Well-Tuned Piano ''The Well-Tuned Piano'' is an ongoing, improvisatory, solo piano work by composer La Monte Young. Begun in 1964, Young has never considered the composition or performance "finished", and he has performed incarnations of it several times since i ...

'' and ''Chronos Kristalla'' (1990).Grimshaw, Jeremy (2011). ''Draw A Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young'', p. 176. . The latter was performed by the

Kronos Quartet The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for almost 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classic ...

and features all notes of the magic chord as

harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...

s on open strings. The quartet has been described as, "offer ngperhaps the ultimate challenge in performing in a just environment". Described as, "complex and throbbing", the chord does not contain its

fundamental Fundamental may refer to: * Foundation of reality * Fundamental frequency, as in music or phonetics, often referred to as simply a "fundamental" * Fundamentalism, the belief in, and usually the strict adherence to, the simple or "fundamental" idea ...

(see root chords), E, and is a subset of the ''Romantic Chord'', G- Dorian in eight octaves, spelled G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. "When the ''Magic Opening Chord'' is obtained by playing the ''Opening Chord'' at one end of a room while the ''Magic Chord'' is played at the other (as Young set it up for me), the feeling-changes of the

stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

effect as you move back and forth re dazzling." The ''opening chord'' consists of E, B, C, E, F, B (ratios 4:6:7:8:9:12 ), adding C and E to the magic chord when combined as the ''magic opening chord'' (). ''The Well-Tuned Piano'' is based on a

pitch lattice In musical tuning, a lattice "is a way of modeling the tuning relationships of a just intonation system. It is an array of points in a periodic multidimensional pattern. Each point on the lattice corresponds to a ratio (i.e., a pitch, or an i ...

perfect fifth In music theory, a perfect fifth is the Interval (music), musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitch (music), pitches with a frequency ratio of 3:2, or very nearly so. In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is the interval fro ...

s and

harmonic seventh The harmonic seventh interval, also known as the septimal minor seventh, or subminor seventh, is one with an exact 7:4 ratio (about 969 cents). This is somewhat narrower than and is, "particularly sweet", "sweeter in quality" than an "ordinar ...

s, tuned as follows: Gann, Kyle (1997)
"La Monte Young's ''The Well-Tuned Piano''"
/ref> For example, G (21/16) is the harmonic seventh of the perfect fifth (7/4 * 3/2 = 21/16):

References

Sources * * * 7-limit tuning and intervals Chords Installation art Minimalistic compositions {{music-theory-stub