Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Chord identification
- 2 Chordal embellishment
- 3 Parallel and sequential progressions
- 4 Harmonic progression
- 5 Chordal hierarchy
- 6 Modulation to closely related keys
- 7 Chromatic chords: diminished/augmented
- 8 Chromatic chords: major and minor
- Epilogue
- Biographies of music theorists
- Notes and references
- Select bibliography of secondary literature
- Index
7 - Chromatic chords: diminished/augmented
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Chord identification
- 2 Chordal embellishment
- 3 Parallel and sequential progressions
- 4 Harmonic progression
- 5 Chordal hierarchy
- 6 Modulation to closely related keys
- 7 Chromatic chords: diminished/augmented
- 8 Chromatic chords: major and minor
- Epilogue
- Biographies of music theorists
- Notes and references
- Select bibliography of secondary literature
- Index
Summary
Chords via “licence”
The diminished seventh and the augmented sixth are among music's most intriguing intervals. An example by the Scotsman John Holden puts them in the spotlight [7.1]. Chords containing these intervals are products of “licence”: the “substitution” of a special pitch for a conventional one. E Minor's dominant root, B, is replaced by the sixth scale degree, C (measure 2, beats 1 through 4); and its fourth scale degree, A, by a chromatic variant, A# (measure 3, beats 2 and 3). These transformations, in various inversions, appear in the thorough bass and the upper voices (represented by the figures), while the analytical fundamental bass presents the progression without substitutions.
Measure 2 bears the imprint of Rameau [7.2], whose Traité de l'harmonie had recently appeared in an abridged English translation. Each of the chord's four members serves in turn as bass in Holden's progression. In accordance with the conventions of a “regular cadence,” the resolution is to the “perfect chord of the key” – E minor – on the downbeat of measure 3.
The two chords that precede the cadential dominant of measure 3 contain an “extreme sharp” (augmented) sixth or an “extreme flat” (diminished) third, again derived via substitution. The other inversional possibilities, for which stepwise resolution to the dominant root is impossible, are not shown. Holden mentions in passing that the chord on beat 2 “has been called the Italian sixth; probably because they first introduced it”.
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- Information
- Thinking about HarmonyHistorical Perspectives on Analysis, pp. 166 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008