Webern, Ives, and Bartk[edit]ForAnton Webern, the importance of quartal harmony lay in the possibility of building new sounds. After hearing Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Webern wrote "You must write something like that, too!" (Webern 1963, 48; "So was mut du auch machen!"[citation needed]) Shortly after, he wrote his Four Pieces for Violin and Piano Op. 7, using quartal harmony as a formal principle, which was also used in later works.[citation needed]

Introduction to Ives's "The Cage", 114 Songs (Reisberg 1975, 345).

Play(helpinfo)Uninfluenced by the theoretical and practical work of theSecond Viennese School, the AmericanCharles Ivesmeanwhile wrote in 1906 a song called "The Cage" (No. 64 of his collection, 114 songs), in which the piano part contained four-part fourth chords accompanying a vocal line which moves in whole tones.[citation needed]Other 20th-century composers, likeBla Bartkwith his piano workMikrokosmosandMusic for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, as well asPaul Hindemith,Carl OrffandIgor Stravinsky, employed quartal harmony in their work. These composers joined Romantic elements with Baroque music, folk songs and their peculiar rhythm and harmony with the open harmony of fourths and fifths.[citation needed]

Fourths in Bla Bartk'sMikrokosmos V, No. 131,Fourths(Quartes)

Play(helpinfo)Hindemith[edit]

Fourth and fifth writing in the second movement of Paul Hindemith'sMathis der MalerHindemith constructed large parts of his symphonic workSymphony: Mathis der Malerby means of fourth and fifth intervals. These steps are a restructuring of fourth chords (C D G becomes the fourth chord D G C), or other mixtures of fourths and fifths (D A D G Cin measure 3 of the example). Hindemith was, however, not a proponent of an explicit quartal harmony. In his 1937 writingUnterweisung im Tonsatz(The Craft of Musical Composition,Hindemith 1937), he wrote that "notes have a family of relationships, that are the bindings of tonality, in which the ranking of intervals is unambiguous," so much so, indeed, that in the art of triadic composition "...the musician is bound by this, as the painter to his primary colours, the architect to the three dimensions." He lined up the harmonic and melodic aspects of music in a row in which the octave ranks first, then the fifth and the third, and then the fourth. "The strongest and most unique harmonic interval after the octave is the fifth, the prettiest nevertheless is the third by right of the chordal effects of itsCombination tones."