Editing Octatonic scale (section)

===Late 19th and 20th century===
{{Image frame|content=<score sound="1"> {
    \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"english horn"
    \relative c' {
        \set Score.currentBarNumber = #5
        \key d\major
        \time 4/4
        \tempo Modéré
        \override DynamicLineSpanner.staff-padding = #2
        r4 r8 \tuplet 3/2 { cis!16\p\< d e } f2~
        f4\> e2 d4\!
        cis4 b b2~
        b1
    }
}
</score>|width=425|caption=The cor anglais melody from "Nuages", the first movement of [[Debussy]]'s ''[[Nocturnes (Debussy)|Nocturnes]]'', bars 5–8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spXwXLqFLvs&t=25s Link to passage]}}
[[File:Istrian scale Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B minor (1922), 1st mvt., bars 13-20.png|thumb|upright=1.8|[[Istrian scale]] in Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor (1822), 1st mvt., bars 13–20; flat fifth marked with asterisk{{sfn|van der Merwe|2005|loc=228}}[[File:Istrian scale Schubert Symphony No. 8 in B minor (1922), 1st mvt., bars 13-20.mid]]]]

The scale is also found in the music of [[Claude Debussy]] and [[Maurice Ravel]]. Melodic phrases that move by alternating tones and semitones frequently appear in the works of both these composers. [[Allen Forte]]{{sfn|Forte|1991|loc=144–145}} identifies a five-note segment in the [[cor anglais]] melody heard near the start of Debussy's "Nuages" from his orchestral suite ''[[Nocturnes (Debussy)|Nocturnes]]'' as octatonic. Mark DeVoto{{sfn|DeVoto|2003|loc=183}} describes "Nuages" as "arguably [Debussy's] boldest single leap into the musical unknown. 'Nuages' defines a kind of tonality never heard before, based on the centricity of a diminished tonic triad (B-D-F natural)." According to Stephen Walsh, the [[cor anglais]] theme "hangs in the texture like some motionless object, always the same and always at the same pitch".{{sfn|Walsh|2018|loc=137}} There is a particularly striking and effective use of the octatonic scale in the opening bars of [[Liszt]]'s late piece ''[[Bagatelle sans tonalité]]'' from 1885.{{Citation needed|date=April 2020}}

The scale was extensively used by Rimsky-Korsakov's student [[Igor Stravinsky]], particularly in his Russian-period works such as ''[[Petrushka (ballet)|Petrushka]]'' (1911), ''[[The Rite of Spring]]'' (1913), up to the ''[[Symphonies of Wind Instruments]]'' (1920). Passages using this scale are unmistakable as early as the ''[[Scherzo fantastique]]'', ''[[Fireworks (Stravinsky)|Fireworks]]'' (both from 1908), and ''[[The Firebird]]'' (1910). It also appears in later works by Stravinsky, such as the ''[[Symphony of Psalms]]'' (1930), the ''[[Symphony in Three Movements]]'' (1945), most of the neoclassical works from the [[Octet (Stravinsky)|Octet]] (1923) to ''[[Agon (ballet)|Agon]]'' (1957), and even in some of the later [[Serialism|serial]] compositions such as the ''[[Canticum Sacrum]]'' (1955) and ''[[Threni (Stravinsky)|Threni]]'' (1958). In fact, "few if any composers have been known to employ relations available to the collection as extensively or in as varied a manner as Stravinsky".{{sfn|Van den Toorn|1983|loc=42}}

The second movement of Stravinsky's Octet<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMOX57Copk Stravinsky's Octet]</ref> for wind instruments opens with what Stephen Walsh{{sfn|Walsh|1988|loc=127}} calls "a broad melody completely in the octatonic scale". Jonathan Cross{{sfn|Cross|2015|loc=144}} describes a highly rhythmic passage<ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211205/n9oY_cikDl0 Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20150720102019/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9oY_cikDl0 Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9oY_cikDl0&t=0m44s| title = Igor Stravinsky - Symphony in Three Movements | website=[[YouTube]]| date = 15 March 2014 }}{{cbignore}}</ref> in the first movement of the ''Symphony in Three Movements'' as "gloriously octatonic, not an unfamiliar situation in jazz, where this mode is known as the 'diminished scale', but Stravinsky of course knew it from Rimsky. The '[[rumba]]' passage... alternates chords of E-flat7 and C7, over and over, distantly recalling the coronation scene from Mussorgsky's ''Boris Godunov''. In celebrating America, the émigré looked back once again to Russia." Van den Toorn{{sfn|Van den Toorn|1983}} catalogues many other octatonic moments in Stravinsky's music.

The scale also may be found in music of [[Alexander Scriabin]] and [[Béla Bartók]]. In Bartók's ''Bagatelles'', [[String Quartet No. 4 (Bartók)|Fourth Quartet]], ''[[Cantata Profana]]'', and ''[[Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs|Improvisations]]'', the octatonic is used with the diatonic, whole tone, and other "abstract pitch formations" all "entwined... in a very complex mixture".{{sfn|Antokoletz|1984|loc={{Page needed|date=December 2014}}}} ''[[Mikrokosmos (Bartók)|Mikrokosmos]]'' Nos. 99, 101, and 109 are octatonic pieces, as is No. 33 of the ''[[44 Duos for Two Violins]]''. "In each piece, changes of motive and phrase correspond to changes from one of the three octatonic scales to another, and one can easily select a single central and referential form of 8–28 in the context of each complete piece." However, even his larger pieces also feature "sections that are intelligible as 'octatonic music{{'"}}.{{sfn|Wilson|1992|loc=26–27}}

[[Olivier Messiaen]] made frequent use of the octatonic scale throughout his career as a composer, and indeed in his seven [[modes of limited transposition]], the octatonic scale is Mode 2. Peter Hill{{sfn|Hill|1995|loc=73}} writes in detail about "La Colombe" (The Dove),<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2pwTP7g7xE "La Colombe" (The Dove)]</ref> the first of a set of ''[[Preludes (Messiaen)|Preludes]]'' for piano that Messiaen completed in 1929, at the age of 20. Hill speaks of a characteristic "merging of tonality (E major) with the octatonic mode" in this short piece.

Other twentieth-century composers who used octatonic collections include [[Samuel Barber]], [[Ernest Bloch]], [[Benjamin Britten]], [[Julian Cochran]], [[George Crumb]], [[Irving Fine]], [[Ross Lee Finney]], [[Alberto Ginastera]], [[John Harbison]], [[Jacques Hétu]], [[Aram Khachaturian]], [[Witold Lutosławski]], [[Darius Milhaud]], [[Henri Dutilleux]], [[Robert Morris (composer)|Robert Morris]], [[Carl Orff]], [[Jean Papineau-Couture]], [[Krzysztof Penderecki]], [[Francis Poulenc]], [[Sergei Prokofiev]], [[Alexander Scriabin]], [[Dmitri Shostakovich]], [[Toru Takemitsu]], [[Joan Tower]],{{sfn|Alegant|2010|loc=109}} [[Robert Xavier Rodriguez]], [[John Williams]]{{sfn|Durrand|2020|p={{page needed|date=April 2021}}}} and [[Frank Zappa]].{{sfn|Clement|2009|loc=214}} Other composers include [[Willem Pijper]],{{sfn|Chan|2005|loc=52}} who may have inferred the collection from Stravinsky's ''The Rite of Spring'', which he greatly admired, and composed at least one piece—his Piano Sonatina No. 2—entirely in the octatonic system.{{sfn|Van den Toorn|1983|loc=464n11}}

In the 1920s, [[Heinrich Schenker]] criticized the use of the octatonic scale, specifically Stravinsky's [[Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (Stravinsky)|Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments]], for the oblique relation between the diatonic scale and the harmonic and melodic surface.{{sfn|Pople|1991|loc=2}}