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Yes.

I like your "Slow Waltz" example.

Yes. A flat two six chord.

But the Neapolitan idea does not HAVE to 1st inversion.

Chopin Predlue in C Minor, Op. 28, No. 20

Check out M8 and M12. Root position Db major in both, lowered 2nd degree of school, moving to Gaug7 (V aug7) G B Eb F, where Eb resolves to D, typical V7 chord.

So Neapolitan is a "feel", as if you are hovering around a temporary tonal center just a wee bit above normal I chord.

I myself really like a bII-I cadence. It's just cool.

Not to mention a bII chord with 7 and b5.

Example, in C major:

Db F G B to a I chord, proceed any way you please. It's the old tritone thing, since G7b5/Db = Db7b5.

I think Ann may want to hit us for making this so complicated.

Oh... I love teaching chords... But for compositional reasons, rather than piano playing... I mean it's vastly important to teach someone who wants to compose the vast alternatives of chord construction (rather than just chord progression): Quartal harmony, 12 tone harmony, mirror harmony, modal harmony, polytonal harmony, etc... So much interesting stuff in there.

It is the relationship between scales and chords that I find the most interesting although both are interesting individually.

No, I'm grateful for the discussion even though a bit of it is beyond my comprehension.

Thanks. I wish I could take credit for it. The example came from the Teacher Handbook (CSP). It's a great resource.

Ok, I get the part about the "feel" and function. But is it still a 6 chord when in root position. Like, first inversion you'd have FAbDb which is a 6 chord. But in root position you have DbFAb which is a straight major chord.

So what I'm understanding is that it's outside the notes and chords of that key, which gives it the Neapolitan feel, even though technically it is not a six chord when in root position. (?)

We are running into a Roman numeral/ lettered chord clash.

6 after a Roman numberal is not a "6 chord". It is a 1st inversion chord.

But 6 after a letter IS a "6 chord".

So, for instance, Db6=Db F Ab Bb. It could also be written Bbm7/Db, but people who use letters, not Roman numerals, generally go for the symbol that seems both easiest to write and simplest to understand. At any rate, the name is: D flat 6,

But if you want F Ab Db, in the key of C minor, you would have to use something like bII6, and you would say: Flat Two Six chord. You would now have to know that "flat two" means a Roman numeral, that II is the second degree, that "b" means lower that degree, and that 6 is a hold over from figured bass.

In figured bass that F would be in the bass. In the key of Cm, already three flats, the Neapolitan in 1st inversion:

b6
F

If you are in C major, the same thing would be
b6
b
F

The F would be notated of course, no letter name.

Thanks, Gary. Sorry I should have specified. The discussions above mine were mixing and matching Roman numerals, where "6" means a first inversion, and letter names, where 6 means something else. I meant the latter.

I figured out where I was confused. I have learned a little bit about Neapolitan (tonality?) where the music temporarily moves in the key that is a semitone above, and of course your chord would then be a Db chord, for example which is the bII of C major. The other thing that I learned about is a dominant type chord that gets respelled into a 6 (letter name) because of where it moves when it modulates. For example, instead of DbFAbCb which is Db7 you have DbFAbB which I guess is a Dbaug6 (German 6?) but has exactly the same tonality as the Db7, changed because it moved. I had mixed up these two things because of all these country names: German, Neopolitan, French...

The Db7, deliberatly "misspelled" with a B natural (Db F Ab B) signals that the root (Db) and the B, which sounds like a minor 7 but is spelled as an augmented 6, are going to "expand".

For example:

*Db* F Ab *B*
*C* F Ab *C*

However, in this case your real key would most likely be F minor. And the "misspelled" Db7 chord becomes a German 6th chord.

If, on the other hand, we are in either they key of C major or C minor and want to "visit" another key, I would suggest the whole Neapolitan idea is simply visiting a key, up a half step. You are visiting the key of Db major. Now, if you only do it for one chord, Db/F or bII6, it's as if you have opened up a sound-window, briefly heard a new key, but the window is slammed back before you have enough time to really feel it.

That is the case in which the first inversion chord will often be called a substitute for ii6 or IV.

F Ab Db, bII6
F A C, IV chord in major key
F Ab C, iv chord in minor key
F A D, ii chord in major key.

(The major key would be C major, the minor C minor)

It's really the beginning of rather complex chromaticism.

If, on the other hand, a composer, already in C minor (for example) slips in a Db chord, then plays around with primary chords in that new, temporary key (Db, Gb, Ab, Ab7, Db), you can actually end up in this new key for some time. There will be sort of a "master-key feeling" that reminds you that sooner or later you have to resolve the issue with something like G7 to Cm, but the Romantics may stay in what I call the "Neapolitan key" for quite a long time. It might be 4 measures, 8 measures, or it might be a page or two in Mahler.

And that is why there is very close relationship between the so called "Neapolitan" and the "German 6th". They end up being the I and V7 chord of the key exactly 1/2 step above the real key.

So the Neapolitan 6th chord is simply a particular inversion, used in a particular way, that is part of something much much MUCH bigger.

Ok, I understand better now. My very first confusion was that Anne had talked about the N6, being the "Neapolitan Sixth, and I understood that it was called this way because there is a sixth going from the root to the top note. This is like in figured bass, rather than letter names. So then when there was a Neapolitan in root position, there was no longer a sixth, but (if coming from a major key) a straight major chord which technically is the bII. The part that escaped me is that up to a certain point, discussion was about the N6, but there is very simply an N which is the Neapolitan which is the ii chord brought down a semitone making it major and no longer diatonic to the original key. There is the Neapolitan pure and simple, and then the N6 which is first inversion, giving it the property of this 6 from the bass, and letting you do particular things with it. AND that this is just the door opening to a bunch of cool things that can be done with this idea.

Hm, might this tie back in to the original question - scales or chord?

I guess it's a vote for chords.

Mini-rant about Roman numerals coming...

And Keystring, this is in NO way aimed at you, or at anyone else in particular. It's just that RNs make me so ANGRY, as a teacher. <grrr>

1) In a major key, exactly what "bII" means is a mess. Why is it major? A II chord is minor. Some people write it as ii, but the system did not start out that way. We have to KNOW that the Neapolitan is major. In other words, the traditional RN system is arbitrary, inconsistent and incredibly inflexible. And it has no real-world application.

2) There is no way to represent a 6th chord in RNs. In the RN world, 6th chords don't exist. They are inversions of 7 chords. If I want to represent an F6 chord, I have to write it as a II6/5. So there is the constant mix-up between X6 (letters) and X6 (RNs).

3) The whole idea of the "Neapolitan" should be a large concept. It is one of 11 other major and minor keys that we can move to at any moment, as briefly as we wish or for as long as we wish. When moving to ANY key, we can use any inversion we wish, and the fact that in situation A or B a particular inversion is picked is merely a matter of context, namely what chord preceeded it and what chord comes next.

The reason I hate theory books, for the most part, is that they are freakin' cookbooks. Yes, everyone has to start somewhere. I understand that. But these books all treat music as if everything important in music started and ended a couple centuries ago, and they put everything into an aritifical box which usually has next to NOTHING to do with the way music really works.

The book I'm using has this: "Composers used the N6 chord as a colorful substitute for IV." And that gave me the impression that it is a thing of the past, and composers don't do that anymore.

Ann,

Very quickly, yes, composers will still do that. ANY chord or progression that EVER sounded "cool" is never thrown away.

The reason your N6 chord is shown to be a substitute for IV is that the IV V I bass line will be preserved.

N6 to V to I is:

Db/F go G to C or Cm in C major or C minor.

Thus
F Ab Db
G B D
C E G C

You will have to double something for four-voice writing.

Note that in a minor key, the IV chord may be written iv, so in C minor, the key, there is only one tiny TINY little 1/2 step difference between:

F Ab C IV
F Ab Db N6

That's a lot of issues with a general theme running underneath.


I've been dancing around this for several years. When I first started harmony theory, it fit in nicely with my experience. My background was m.d. solfege and lots of sonatinas (Clementi) and Baroque. I had a sense of functions and regular modulations like the books teach. If I suddenly wanted to call G "Do" and D "So" in a piece that had started out in C major, it was an easy transition to understand "modulated to G" and V/V. The Roman numeral analysis fit nicely with the type of music that I had experienced, and it was especially good for "relativity" (the dominant of anything - that's a relationship).

But even Bach's music gets more complicated than music "of Bach's period", and one book warns us not to break the rules that Bach broke while teaching what Bach "did". (!) And then with an overview of music history I saw that musical form existed and evolved before the Baroque period, and continued evolving afterward. So we're being taught from a model which is in a key period of music's development, but it is a period.

One of my theory books tried to address this: it went with the RCM exams until those exams changed recently. This book stated that they were teaching theory based on the Baroque period, because our music grew out of it, but that it has evolved since then. Once in a while you'd see them try to sneak in other periods, and they tried to give ideas of how music worked beyond the official rules. They'd try to get into physics, and tritones, and general patterns. But they were still bound to the exam system.

The RCM itself tried to expand past the limitations you mentioned. The new edition has not only Roman Numerals, but figured bass, and solfege names. Still, it's tied into four part (vocal) harmony.

The old (1904) book by Goetschius goes past this, by having us always look at the interplay of melody, harmony, and rhythm. But how many students would work through every single movement of every composer that he assigns, and do so by playing it, and listening? Then there is a 1960's "Oxford" harmony that tries to escape the stiff, artificial, academic approach to music theory. It goes on a different tack (which I rather like).

I dunno. Experiencing music in a very raw way without preconception leaves us open to finding patterns we might not know are there. But without some kind of a framework, it can seem random without order. But with two much order, we have boxed in music and made ourselves blind to what is.

I think that maybe all these different systems give us different ways of seeing music - knowing that music is multifaceted. RN gives us degrees, where there is such a thing. Figured bass gives us a relationship from the bottom, which actually works nicely with the N6 (six from the bottom). Letter names for chords lets us hear the cord purely for what it is. But somehow these things should not take over, becoming rules and formulas, and materials for tests. Or?

About the bII phenomenon. When I first learned about diatonic chords of regular major and minor chords (harmonic, natural and melodic as they are taught), we began first by observing which were major and minor. Only later did I memorize the I ii iii IV etc. It had meaning rather than being a formula. Taking a ii chord, bringing the bottom note down a half step automatically widens the gap between the bottom note and the middle note to a major third, (and ofc the top note comes down too) making it a major chord, hence the II, with the bII in front. If we experience and explore it first, then maybe the shortcut names if they are needed are just memory joggers. They hardly matter. To me bII is a fast way of saying "up a half step from the tonic" - it's a little reminder telling me what happened. the problem comes if we are now in a tonality of Db (for C major key) in a quasi-modulation, and hear it as such. We no longer really have this 2nd degree --- and that is the downfall of Roman Numerals.

Is the solution to experience music first, pick up the patterns without a bunch of fancy names in the beginning, and then carefully give/get the labels so we have them, instead of the labels taking over?

When arranging or improvising I sometimes use a technic which I think is called a half tone (HT) prechord, or a HT approach chord, or a HT slide. It produces the same or similar effect (depending on the inversion) as using an N6 chord but you don’t have to know anything about N6 chords. It can also produce the same effect as a tritone substitution, but you don’t have to know anything about tritones. It is not only easier to understand and use it is more versatile. It is a very simple concept that is easy for students to learn and apply, and it can be very effective.

If we were sitting together at the piano this would be very easy to explain and would only take a couple of minutes. It will be difficult to explain in a short post. I am also probably wasting my time as well because everyone already knows about this. However:

When a change of chord is about to occur you can play a chord that is a HT away from the new chord on the beat before the new chord. Put another way: the change of chord probably occurs on the first beat of the bar, so the HT prechord could be used on the last beat of the previous bar. The prechord can be a HT above or a HT below the target chord. Which chord to use depends entirely on which one will work with the melody note at that point. Sometimes either will work, sometimes one or the other will work, and sometimes neither will work. Usually a 7th chord sounds best.


In this example the second 2 bars have a HT prechord inserted on the melody note B. The target chord in this case is C so the options for a HT prechord to use with the melody note B are a Db7 or B chord. Melody note B will obviously work with a B chord, and it will also work well with a Db7 chord because the B is the 7th in Db7. So in this case there is a choice. It just depends on which you think sounds the best.