Lesson 1 - Progressions within Progressions: an Introduction (9:44)

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Del curso dictado por National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

243 calificaciones

National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

243 calificaciones

This course introduces students to strategies for style writing of common practice European art music. The issues of harmonic progression, voice leading, and texture are addressed in addition to relevant compositional concepts like repetition, variation, and elaboration. The course aims to offer a creative space even within the restrictions of stylistic emulation.

De la lección

Module Six

This final module starts with an introduction to what I call “progressions within progressions”. Often a composer uses V-I progressions that are in keys related to the original key but not actually in it. So in the key of C major, for instance, it is quite common to see a progression that has a D major chord going to a G major chord. Well, up to now, we haven’t seen this and we wouldn’t have a way to describe it. That D major chord isn’t in the key of C, it’s not a Neapolitan or Augmented 6. It’s not a borrowed chord because neither C major nor c minor has a D major as the chord on the second scale degree. However, this D major is a fifth above the G major chord, which means that there is a dominant-tonic relationship between the D major chord that’s not in the key and the G major chord that is. This sounds more confusing than it is, so I won’t continue to describe it here. Instead, I encourage you to check out the videos on this concept, which I think make it quite clear what these are and how to use them. For those who have studied harmony before, you might be familiar with the much more common term “secondary dominant”. That’s what these progressions within progressions are. We will also look at a technique that is crucial to the musical style under examination in this course: the Alberti bass. This is the familiar arpeggiated chordal pattern that you frequently encounter in music from this era. They are easy to write, but there are a few things that need to be kept in mind when composing them. There are also some videos that aim to bring course concepts together for you. The first is a video on elaborating progressions. While the basic progressions presented in the first week aren’t extensive, we learned how to significantly alter them via chord inversion and diatonic and/or chromatic substitution. But we haven’t looked too much at how to take all of these strategies and put them together to create a unique progression. This video aims to offer that. Finally, we take a close look at a theme from one of Mozart’s very famous theme and variations, part of the K. 331 piano sonata. This is important not simply because it brings together the concepts presented in this class. More importantly, the work can function as a model for you in composing your final project. It is an excellent example of rounded binary form - the form you need to use for the final project composition.

Lesson 1 - Progressions within Progressions: an Introduction (9:44)9:44

Lesson 2 - Progressions within Progressions: Examples (13:53)13:53

Lesson 3 - Progressions within Progressions: Secondary Leading Tone Chords (6:17)6:17

Conoce a los instructores

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

Last week when we were analyzing the Beethoven Bagatelle, we

ran into a chord that was, well it looked like

a two chord that was major, and it was in

first inversion, and it was just before a five chord.

And I talked about how we would analyze that as a

five of five chord, and I called it a secondary dominant.

I want to look more at those

kinds of chords this week.

These secondary dominants, or some of you may

be familiar with what's called an applied dominant.

These show up all over classical music.

And they are

the third kind of chromaticism that we looked at.

So the first kind was, you know, the Neapol,

the alterations of chords to create Neapolitans and augmented sixths.

It's things that, you know, you can't identify without this very special name.

Then there were the borrowed chords, which

is basically borrowing chords from the parallel mode.

And now these

form a final kind of chromaticism, these secondary dominants.

Now these secondary dominance, though, are also key to modulation in classical music.

We're not going to talk about modulation in, in this course.

But we do, or I feel at least we should, talk about secondary dominance.

So let me go through it a little bit.

Here we've got

a simple one two six five to five progression in c major.

Move that up a bit. Let me play this so you can hear.

[MUSIC]

Good. And we note that the two chord is

actually a fifth above the five chord.

And so if we wanted to turn this into, not a two six

five, from a two six five into a five six five of five.

That is to make it a dominant of the dominant.

Then we just need to change one note, we've got the root,

we've got the third, we've got the fifth, and we've got the seventh.

And the only thing holding us back from sounding like a

dominant seventh chord is the fact that it's minor, you know.

Because we have the root, the root and the seventh are a minor seventh apart.

So the problem is the triad. The triad is minor.

If we turn the triad into major, it becomes a dominant chord [SOUND].

So there's our third and we

raise the third to make it major. And now, if we go back and listen to it.

Actually, what I'll do instead

[SOUND]. Is this [SOUND].

Whoops.

And we can compare them, right next to each other.

[MUSIC]

We can hear this leading tone resolving up to the tonic.

But even when we get here, we, it still sounds like a five chord.

It doesn't really, we're not really convinced that

it's all of the sudden a new tonic.

So in this sense it's just a coloristic effect.

Just like the Neopolitan or the augmented sixth, they're borrow chords.

Now I call these progressions within progressions and if you go out

on the web and you go and Google that it'll probably

just lead you back to this website or to this class.

No one really uses this terminology.

But I think its kind of useful none the less, as a way to describe this.

We could look at this and say look, there's

a five one, a one to five progression happening here.

And inside that one to five progression, there's

another progression happening, which is also one to five.

So this is a, or sorry, five to one.

This is a five to one progression.

And this is the one to five progression.

So we can see that we have a

kind of progression inside of a larger progression.

And that's why I call them progressions

with inside a pr, with, progressions within progressions.

The other thing that these secondary dominants

bring up, is the idea of function.

Now I said very early on in the class, that when we look at the chords of tonal

harmony in classical music, we find that there's only

one instance of a major triad with a minor seventh.

And that's on the dominant seventh chord. So that any

time that we get a major triad with

a dominant seven, it functions as a dominant.

Now, of course you can have passing chords

where they don't really have a strong function.

But in a situation like this, this chord functions as a dominant.

So this is why we can't explain this, for

instance, as like, you know if we can't do this.

whoops.

You'd say, well, why can't we call it a borrowed chord?

Well, first of all, who, who is it borrowing from?

Because in C minor, this chord isn't major.

Well, why can't we just explain it as a major to six five going to five?

What's wrong with that?

Because it doesn't explain the relationship between these chords.

The relationship between these chords is a dominant to tonic relationship.

And so we need the Roman numeral analysis to explain

that dominant to tonic relationship. That's why we have this,

at times frustrating to students, notation of the five of five.

But this issue of function is really important because,

and, and I want to look at it with borrowed chords.

because, just because something's a major triad for

instance, doesn't mean that it's a dominant chord.

When we make an alteration, doesn't mean that we need to explain things as,

all of a sudden as a five of something. We have to look at how it functions.

Let's move on to G minor. We'll move on to this example.

G minor.

One chord, the four six four, the pedal six four, going back to one.

Let me play this.

[MUSIC]

Okay. Borrowed chord.

If we analyze this, what's right after it.

Let me play this with the borrowed chord, so this rather

than being minor, which it's supposed to be in a minor key.

This four chord is now major, we've borrowed

from the parallel minor, from, from the parallel major.

[MUSIC]

It's beautiful sound, actually. Well, okay, now I'm going to

do something, watch this. If we look at this last

progression [SOUND]. We see that we've got the

one chord. And you say so this is a four six four.

And then, we go here and we get, well, if I

have to explain that, that's like a major, the seven major chord.

So usually we get the diminished chord, but here we get the seven major chord.

If I play this, though, if you listen to it,

you'll see that this actually doesn't explain what's happening here sonically.

[MUSIC]

Actually, we hear ton, we have dominant going to tonic.

We can hear this dominant going to tonic.

Let me play it one more time, so that you can hear it.

[MUSIC]

And because of that, we can explain it this way.

We actually need to explain this as a five six four

of the seven major chord going to seven major.

So, I wanted to use this example to illustrate how we

really have to listen to harmony in order to do analysis.

And that we always need to put harmony in context.

And that when we hear dominant tonic relationships,

we have to explain them as dominant tonic relationships.

Now, as we've seen here, we've got a five

of five, and we have a five of seven major.

Are there other fives of whatevers?

The answer is yes, and what I want to do in the next video

is show you some of the more common ones, so that they add

to your repertoire of harmonic progressions.

And then, at that point, you actually have an extremely rich

toolbox of harmonic progressions that you can use to craft your music.

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