BE KIND TO YOUR NEIGHBOURING NOTES NIMBLE CHROMATICS
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fugue No 1 in C Op 87 is rare in that it uses only the white notes on the piano, constructed solely from the seven different notes of the scale of C major with no accidentals. Virtually all music based on the major-minor tonal system moves from one key to another, modulating by use of chromatic notes and chords. Composers also use chromatic notes to add colour to a line by decorating it with lower neighbours, but this does not necessarily mean a change of key (the opening D# at the start of Mozart’s Sonata in A minor K310 is a case in point).
A chromatic scale uses all 12 notes within the octave and can be fingered in a number of different ways. In
