Northern lights chord
In music, the 'northern lights' chord is an eleven-note chord from Ernst Krenek's Cantata for Wartime, that represents the Northern Lights. Krenek's student, Robert Erickson, cites the chord as an example of a texture arranged so as to, "closely approach the single-object status of fused-ensemble timbres, for example, the beautiful 'northern lights'...chord, in a very interesting distribution of pitches, produces a fused sound supported by a suspended cymbal roll". "The 'northern lights' sounds, so icy and impersonal and menacing, are a brilliant orchestral invention."
At eleven-notes the chord is one pitch shy of the total chromatic. Every note except E is sounded.
