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

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Del curso dictado por National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

219 calificaciones

National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

219 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

What I want to do is show you four situations where

you could sneak in one of these progressions within a

progression, and these are four situations that are very common,

so that's why I want to show them to you.

We'll start, and we'll classify them along the lines

of chords being so far apart from each other.

So our first example, for instance, is chords that are second apart.

And that second

is upwards rather than going downwards.

If I look at this, four, it's, well in this case it's four going to five.

It could just as easily be one going to two.

But here we have four going to five.

And what I want to do is slip in a dominant chord here over the five.

So what is that, well that's, well we just saw that one, it was actually two.

So,

two going to five, so what do I need to do then here?

Well, okay. [SOUND]

If I do this, I'm going to do this.

Because I'm going to insert the chord here.

Well, I kind of need to do this

and I'm going to repeat this whole thing. Whoops.

And I'll move that down there. And do that, right?

Because that gives us, that's a two seven,

it's major, so we get the five seven of five.

And that's fine. Let's hear this.

[MUSIC]

But in a way, it's a kind of missed opportunity.

Because if you look at this voice leading, you have

this, okay, so chromaticism is all about being chromatic, right?

And if there's one thing you've seen, we get, for

instance, if you take any Neapolitan chord, and you're in

minor, you take the two diminished chord and you just

moved one note by a semitone to get the Neapolitan.

If you want an augmented sixth, like an Italian augmented sixth

chord, you take the four in first inversion, and you move

the root up by a semitone.

Or if you want to create a five of five, you take the

two chord in measure, and you move the third by a semitone.

So you see how important the semitone is. It's the heart of chromaticism.

And this is what I mean by a lost opportunity.

It's just, it's a very simple thing to fix, but it's a lost

opportunity into voice leading, especially with

chords that are a second apart, because.

Here we've got the, the thing that really

changes, and adds the chromatic color to this.

Is this f sharp?

And then we leap out of it, and we go here.

And it's kind of hidden inside of this.

And it's not wrong, it's just, it doesn't take advantage of something.

Let me re-voice lead this. [SOUND] It's a bit nicer.

[SOUND] If I do this instead. So I'm going to keep this here.

[SOUND] And we'll hear this very clearly.

It's in the outer voice, it's in the bass

voice, and we're going to hear this chromaticism go up,

semitone up, semitone up to the five chord.

And you might even do this.

[MUSIC]

[UNKNOWN]

[MUSIC]

So you get this step wise motion. Sorry, we need to reanalyze it, a bit.

Need to analyze it as a six five now.

Whoops there's something weird going on here.

Five six five, there we go. Let me play this now.

And you'll be able to hear the chromaticism even better now.

[MUSIC]

One more time.

[MUSIC]

Let me take that this out because I think it blows it a little bit.

I just want you to be able to hear this chromaticism very well.

[SOUND] So we can hear that move up in the base line.

Good, so that's how to think about adding in this

progression within a progression of, where chords are a second apart.

Third apart, well this is actually kind of a common thing if

you wanted in a modulation in particular if let's say you are in

a one code and you are major, and you want to go

the third that's below it and why because this is the parallel minor.

So,

[MUSIC]

[UNKNOWN] will get that.

We want to add in some kind of five of five.

Well, the fifth above this G chord is a D chord.

So, well, let's just voice lead it, you know?

[SOUND] We're going to need a D major chord,

so this guy's going to go to the root.

[MUSIC]

And we need to move this up by, this is going to be our, our semitone.

You, you notice that you get, you know, you

get small movements, and you, you'll very frequently get just

one note moving by a semitone, and that's, that's

going to be the, also the note that is adding chromaticism.

Let's throw in the analysis here.

Which is a five. It doesn't always have to be five seven,

right?

It can just be five, five of six, like that.

So if we look at this, this is actually a three chord that's gone major.

In a major key, the three is a minor, right?

So we get a three chord and we make it major.

Let's hear this one.

[MUSIC]

Another common one that we find is chords that are a fourth apart.

And actually, I'm going to leave this

here, because the voice leading really gets

we're really going to have to change the voice leading here once we do this.

Okay, so we need to, this is kind of interesting.

We need to go to the chord that's a fourth above, this one.

So we're going from the one chord to the four chord, which is kind

of a common thing that we see.

So, well what's the chord that's a fifth above the four chord.

That happens to be the one chord, right?

So a fourth above is the same as a fifth

below, so if this was a fifth below this one.

The five chord of the, of the four chord here is actually a B flat major chord.

Now, this is an instance where you can't just use B flat triad.

The B flat triad to get the sound of a dominant.

We're really going to need to add in a seventh.

Let me play this, quickly for you.

[MUSIC]

So that just sounds like, well, I mean, in

a way it actually right now sounds like five to

one, but if this was the beginning of the

piece, it would just sound like one going to four.

But we can definitely make it a sound like a dominant.

And we have to add in the seventh, so let's do that.

[MUSIC]

Well, this is really easy because we just keep everything the same.

[MUSIC]

And well, our roots are doubled right, because it's a root position, triad.

And we want to then take one of them and make it the seventh.

That makes more sense here.

Otherwise we're going to get us a a, you know, five four two, which we could do.

Maybe I, maybe I'll do that once I do this one.

But

[MUSIC]

Like that.

Oh, in the end actually we won't need to change the voice leading.

This actually works out nicely. So, let me play this so you can hear.

For now I have to analyze it properly. We have the five, seven

of four. Going to four.

[MUSIC]

And there it's absolutely clear that this is the dominant of this four chord.

Now what happens if I do

[MUSIC]

Just shifting the voicing around. Here we go.

Five four to a four, going to four six.

That's four in first inversion. Let's hear how that sounds.

[MUSIC]

That's actually very nice.

We have this very smooth voice leading in the bass line.

So, there are some options with the With chords

that are a fourth apart, where the distance is upward.

And the last one which we've actually kind of already looked at.

But I want to show again.

Chords that are a fifth apart because this is extremely common.

This is perhaps the most common use of this secondary dominant.

We've got the one chord and were going to accord

that is a fifth above, and now I voice let it

so that it looks like its a fourth below, but

again, these are inversions, a fifth up, is a fourth down.

so, now what we want to do, as we already saw

is we want to insert basically a two chord that's major right?

Because the two is a fifth above the fifth, so let's

do that, and let's change this.

[MUSIC]

And where that two chord is an A,

well it needs to be an A major chord, its

an A chord, but, oops, sorry it

should be minor. It's an A, what, A diminished

cord, but we need it to be an A major cord.

So let's do that now.

Well, a little bit, sorry, I'm stopping for a second.

I see.

Wait a second.

[MUSIC]

Whoops.

[MUSIC]

That's what we really want.

[MUSIC]

Sorry, that's the, that's, this will make this a whole lot easier.

Okay, so we just

[MUSIC]

Voice lead that one down.

[MUSIC]

oops well, oops.

We have that, and of course easiest voice leading would

be this, but of course that gives us parallel octaves.

So we don't want that.

[MUSIC]

And remember, we need, we need this to be major.

So by default, in a minor key, this two-chord is, as diminished triads.

So, we need to alter not just the third to make

it major but also the fifth to make it not diminished.

Yeah, but so that it's a perfect fifth between the root and the fifth.

And then we analyze it.

This is five, a

five. And we play this.

[MUSIC]

There we have it.

And the other thing is I want to point out, this is just a five of five.

[MUSIC]

We can do this too. Five seven a five.

Let me play that.

[MUSIC]

So that's an overview of four places where you can think of inserting a

progression of a, of a dominant going to a tonic inside of a progression.

What I want to look at in the next video is the fact that,

you know, so far I've only been using five and five seven chords.

Some of you may be thinking, but wait a second, you

told us that you have a substitute of the dominant with

the, that is the five chord, with the seven diminished chord.

And the dominant seventh chord can be substituted with

the fully diminished seventh chord, or half diminished seventh chord.

Could we do that here?

The answer is yes.

And so in the next video, I want to show you some examples

of not secondary dominant chords, but what we call secondary leading tone chords.

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