Whole-tone scale
A scale made exclusively of whole tones.
What it means
The whole-tone scale consists exclusively of whole-tone steps and therefore comprises six notes per octave. Because all the steps are the same size, no note stands out from the others: there is no leading tone, no fifth above the root, and thus no tonal gradient. The scale has no centre, and each of its notes can count equally as a starting point.
Musical use
From this evenness follows its peculiar sound — floating, directionless, without a point of rest. This was used above all in the music around 1900, when composers sought alternatives to functional harmony; there the whole-tone scale is met as a surface of sound, as a running figure, and as a means of suspending tonal references.
Harmonically, no major or minor triad can be formed from its notes, but the augmented triad can, which likewise divides the octave evenly and therefore has no unambiguous root. Both belong together and rest on the same principle — the formation of a scale from equal distances, which is called the distance principle in theory.
Remarkable is that there are only two different whole-tone scales: every further transposition leads back to one of the two. In spelling, enharmonic questions inevitably arise, because six equal steps cannot be represented without contradiction with seven natural notes.
Because all degrees are equally far from one another, there are only two different whole-tone scales: one on C and one on C♯. Every note can be the root, leading tones and semitone steps are missing entirely, and the chords from its material are augmented triads. That is why the scale sounds floating, without goal and without ending. Debussy used it in many piano pieces, and Russian composers of the nineteenth century also used it for fairy-tale-like or uncanny scenes.
Performance practice
Play whole-tone passages evenly and without emphasizing individual notes — any emphasis creates a centre that the scale does not have. Use the uniformity for the fingering as well: because the pattern repeats, a fingering once found can be transposed. And give such passages time; their effect lies in the floating, not in pressing forward.