In the 16th and early 17th centuries, notably in the secular Italian and English madrigal, chromaticism was used to heighten expressiveness; the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo and some of his contemporaries pushed this tendency to extremes that distorted the perception of modal scale structure.

When was the chromatic scale invented?

Principles for composition within the chromatic scale (consisting of all of the 12 half steps within the octave) were first articulated by Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg early in the 20th century. Other scales have also been employed on an experimental basis.

What is literary chromaticism?

Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism and modality (the major and minor, or "white key", scales).