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I was just listening to the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung and as Valhalla goes up in flames there is a massive E-Flat augmented chord played by the full orchestra (pg. 610 of the full score). Even though it's played for just a moment, it is so powerful and when you hear it, you immidiately recognize its quality.

Can you think of any other pieces of music that use an augmented chord to its advantage? I could think of only three others: Brunhilde's "Hojotjo" motif from Der Ring, the bombastic opening to Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (probably the best use of augmented chords ever), and the quiet duet between the basset horn and bassoon in the Introitus of Mozart's Requiem.

Can you think of any others?

If I recall correctly, Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko uses the augmented triad, particularly for part of the music for the King of the Sea.

There are augmented chords on many pages of Tristan und Isolde and for long passages of Parsifal. Take, for example, the spectacular chromatic sweep upward of augmented triads climaxing in Tristan's cursing of the day ("Verfluchter Tag mit deinem Schein!") in his 3rd Act delirium (page 492
in http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/d ... Score_.pdf).

The main Faust theme of Liszt's Faust Symphony is made up of a chain of augmented triads. These help give the whole movement its color. A similar color also suffuses Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande.

--Sixtus

A good fraction of the chords (and arpeggios) in Liszt's Nuages gris for piano are augmented, again giving the same kind of tonal ambiguity found in the other pieces I mentioned.

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/4 ... s_gris.pdf

--Sixtus

Second-to-last chord of Mahler's 7th symphony would be mine.