Elektra chord

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Elektra chord: E B Db F Ab.
Elektra chord as arpeggio then simultaneously (help·info)

**Elektra chord**
Component intervals from root

diminished fourth
minor second
diminished seventh
perfect fifth
root

The Elektra chord is a "complexly dissonant signature-chord"^[1] and motivic elaboration used by composer Richard Strauss to represent the title character of his opera Elektra that is a "bitonal synthesis of E major and C-sharp major" and may be regarded a polychord related to conventional chords with added thirds^[2], in this case an eleventh chord.

Elektra chord implies an E Major and C# Major chord together (C# E# G# = Db F Ab)
Each chord separately as arpeggio then both simultaneously (help·info)

In Elektra the chord, Elektra's "harmonic signature" is treated various ways betraying "both tonal and bitonal leanings...a dominant 4/2 over a nonharmonic bass. Like Elektra herself, this chord is both monomaniacal and polymorphic." It is associated as well with its seven note complement which may be arranged as a dominant thirteenth^[1] while other characters are represented by other motives or chords.

Motivic elaboration of Elektra chord
Elektra chord as motive (help·info)

The chord is also found in Claude Debussy's Feuilles mortes, where it may be analyzed as an appoggiatura to a minor ninth chord, and Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang, and Alexander Scriabin's Sixth Piano Sonata ^[2].

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

^ ^a ^b Lawrence Kramer. "Fin-de-siècle Fantasies: Elektra, Degeneration and Sexual Science", Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2. (Jul., 1993), pp. 141-165.
^ ^a ^b H. H. Stuckenschmidt; Piero Weiss. "Debussy or Berg? The Mystery of a Chord Progression", The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3. (Jul., 1965), pp. 453-459.

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