Why Eric Whitacre's Clusterchords Work
The 14-part clusterchord at the climax of Eric Whitacre’s Water Night [at 2:43 in the video]. It’s crunchier than a Butterfinger, sure. But it also doesn’t sound like someone sat on a piano. It’s also not random. I’ve seen scores that instruct you to just pick a member of this scale, but that’s not what’s happening here. So, why does this chord work? Did he uncover the secret chord that David played and pleased the Lord? Is his hair actually magic? Nope. It comes down to two things: Voicing and Voice leading.
I. Voice-Leading
Voice-leading is the linear progression of a particular part, and the way it interacts with the other parts. Theory students will recognize guidelines such as “keep the common tone where possible”, “move to the closest chord tone” and “try to avoid jumps into a dissonance”. While these are not hard and fast rules, they are still great ideas. These particular guidelines allow singers to easily glide into a 14-part chord. Well, maybe not easily...but maybe not as difficultly.
To really see why this chord works, we actually have to go back to the beginning of the phrase. The preparation for this chord starts back here. Tripled root and a 3rd. All things considered, a pretty easy start to the phrase.
Let’s color code each voice part to see how they move – Green if it moves by step; Blue if it stays the same; Orange if it jumps. Mostly steps and common tones. This makes it much easier for the singers, and it makes the line much smoother to the ear. We have a few jumps, but we’ll see in a second why those jumps aren’t so bad.
II. Voicing
Second, we’ll look at voicing. Voicing has more to do with things like the spacing of the chord, which chord members and extensions are present, and where those chord members and extensions lie within the chord.
This 14-part chord, it’s entirely diatonic – meaning no accidentals, and there’s only 7 unique pitch-classes in the diatonic collection. So, we know something got doubled. Or, rather a lot of somethings.
Maybe we should ask first, what chord is this? The song is in Db major, and I feel pretty confident calling this preceding chord a Db Major with an 11 + 13 thrown in, given that 8 of the 11 notes in the chord are either Db F or Ab. The chord in question is a little less straight forward – mostly because every member of the Db major scale is present.
So, let’s look at where we ended up. You’ll notice from the piano reduction that we have open spacing in the basses , and clusters up top. This is generally a good idea. Clusters in the bass would be really muddy , whereas this opening spacing allows for some clarity. For more on spacing chords, check out this video on using the harmonic series to voice chords.
Being that our bass notes are the foundation, I’m going to argue that this is a Gb major chord, which would make this a Gb13 chord. If that’s the case, here’s a color-coded graph of the chord. The basses make up an open Gb major chord, Tenors add a 7 and a 13 – and double the root, Altos add 9 and 11 – as well as a reinforcement of 3 and 5, and the sopranos double the 1, 7, 9, and 13.
Let’s look at what that’s done to the scores: the root comes in with a score of 3, the 3rd and the 5th with 2, 7th, 9th, and 13th at 2, and the 11th with 1.
Note, if we take away the bass notes, it’s very difficult to hear where we are – at that point it’s just a disembodied cluster. In both the 11 and 14-part chords, the basses ground us with the structural harmonies keeping the listener’s ear in Db major.
On top of all of that, we’ve got some text painting – the opening of the chord with the text “if you open your eyes”. All of those things together is why this chord works. It’s a combination of voicing and voice-leading . With voice-leading, it keeps the common tone, or move by step when possible. With voicing, the chord is well spaced with gaps in the bass, clusters up top.