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Which sonatina and movement are we in?

No 5., movement 1. Following previous pattern of analysis, this information had not been presented. So, I assumed you were all anxiously awaiting it.

But, if ready to move along I am fine with that as well.

Earlier, I just wrote out the triads and sevenths for the natural minor scale, and then adopted the raised leading tone from the harmonic minor scale and looked only at the fifth and seventh degrees of the scale, giving chords V7 and VII7.

I decided to do something I've never done before, which is write out all the triads and seventh chords in all three types of minor scales. (I have seen this done for triads in the Robert Pace method book.) Hey, you have to entertain yourself somehow when flying from Washington to Maine. Only Washington, D.C. though. If it had been from Washington State I'm sure I would have found time to compose a few sonatinas in classical form as well .

I discovered some interesting things. I'll start with major as a comparison point, and I'm doing this in C so I don't confuse myself with too many accidentals.

The way I learn, this is hard to learn by reading someone else's results, and easier to learn by getting the general idea of the exercise and then working it out myself, possibly multiple times to get more comfortable with it. But in this text based medium, all I can do is say, "here's what I've found, play with it yourself if you find it interesting."

C major:
notes: C D E F G A B
triads: C Dm Em F G Am Bdim
sevenths: Cmaj7 Dm7 Em7 Fmaj7 G7 Am7 Bm7b5

C natural minor:
notes: C D Eb F G Ab Bb
triads: Cm Ddim Eb Fm Gm Ab Bb
sevenths: Cm7 Dm7b5 Ebmaj7 Fm7 Gm7 Abmaj7 Bb7

C harmonic minor:
notes: C D Eb F G Ab B
triads: Cm Ddim Ebaug Fm G Ab Bdim
sevenths: Cm(maj7) Dm7b5 Ebaug(maj7) Fm7 G7 Abmaj7 Bdim7

C melodic minor:
notes: C D Eb F G A B
triads: Cm Dm Ebaug F G Adim Bdim
sevenths: Cm(maj7) Dm7 Ebaug(maj7) F7 G7 Am7b5 Bm7b5

I find this fascinating. Looking across all three types of minor scales -- since any of these notes can easily occur in minor key music and not really count as out of key.

We find the min(maj7) chord, and the aug chord, and the intriguing aug(maj7) chord.

We find three diminished triads, at IIdim (natural, harmonic), VIdim (harmonic), and VIIdim (harmonic, melodic).

We find three half-diminished chords, at IIm7b5 (harmonic), VIm7b5 (melodic), and VIIdim7b5 (melodic).

We still only have one fully diminished chord, at VIIdim7, and this only within the harmonic minor scale.

Please let me know if you find any mistakes in the above.

Here are some more ideas from the above:

It highlights the small vocabulary of chords/harmonies used in the music we've been working with. How many augmented major seven chords have we met, compared to the number of dominant seventh or even diminished triads that we've met?

To me, it suggests a use for the exam-type question, about what type of scale contains a given chord. Suppose you've fallen in love with Ebaug(maj7) and want to write some music containing it. If you can figure out that this appears in the C harmonic minor and C melodic minor scales as bIIIaug(maj7), you have an idea of which notes you might try to build around it to create a melody and a harmony. Maybe real composers never think that way, and just look for things that sound good, or think in terms of "Eb G B D, what would lead up to that and what would lead away from it" and then later discover that the whole thing is feeling like C minor. Anyway, just an idea. This is the kind of way I think, but I am miles, nay, parsecs, away from being a real composer.

I don't think I'll remember the exact pattern of all these chords (note I didn't even write the lists out in roman numerals, and just eyeballed the pattern off the letter name chords). But they give me something to keep in mind: in a minor key, dim and m7b5 can occur more than just at scale degree VII. And something to wonder about: VIdim or IIm7b5... how might that actually be used in music? Where would it be progressing from and to?

Hmmm, maybe on my next flight I'll write out the roman numerals and start getting more familiar with these patterns.

Doing this kind of thing, starting from rules and working out what can be concluded from the rules, is something I love, and probably a big part of why I got my degree in mathematics. It's the epitome of deductive logic.

Then the next application for me is to look at music and name these.

It's a later add-on for me to start caring about what do composers actually tend to do the most, and what is less common? (*)

And still a mostly foreign concept to wonder how these things sound, and not only in isolation, but especially one after the other.

I seem to have everything backwards.


(*) When I started to care about what composers do, is when I started to care about inversions, because I started to notice that there were patterns they used that depended, not just on the chords used, but on the specific inversion used. For example, a ii-I6/4-V7-I progression.

This will definitely come in most handy, PS88. When multiple accidentals are at play, labeling the chords has not been of tremendous value to me in identifying the key. This will help. Thanks

When we left this to explore the minor keys we weren't sure what keys we were moving through in the development.

We finished the exposition at M34 in D major.

M35 looked like being F# dim until the last beat when it became an actual D7 instead of a rootless one and closed into G minor.

M39 F7 closed into M40 Bb

M43 G7 closed into M44 C minor

M45 A7 closed into M46 D major, which turned out to be the dominant pedal to return to G major for the recapitulation.

If you look at his path around the circle of fifths you'll find it's quite adventurous. He's achieved it using minor keys and playing on the fact that a dominant seventh closes into both major and minor tonics.

He's not toyed much with the material while he's done this either so it's much easier to follow.
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I need to read RNs in a number of conventions I wouldn't restrict myself to writing in just one. Use whichever one you're most comfortable with.

When the chords are diatonic VII7 tells me all I need to know even if I'm in an unfamiliar key, like G-flat. When the music get more complicated letter chords tell me how the chord relates to other local keys in the circle of fifths - RNs don't.

I frequently use lower case Romans for minor chords, but I'm just as likely to use upper case and know from the key whether it's major or minor but when a piece is modulating, Romans make life harder rather than easier.

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Eb G B D: I'd either stick with Eb aug or move to G major.

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With all the possibilities of added secondary sevenths I'd want to practise designing something like the London Underground Map first.

Look at the possibilities of primary triads centred on A minor:

--------------- C aug
F maj --------- C maj ------- G maj
D min/maj ----- A min ------- E min/maj -- B min
B dim (G7) ---- F# dim ------
G# dim (E7)

Richard, that's a VERY interesting chord, and by itself it just doesn't sound like it is part of C minor. But in fact you can find it somewhere in Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, although I forget what key it is, and it resolves like this:

Eb G B D--->>>Eb G C

Also a great favorite of Liszt.

It has a VERY powerful dominant sound, and I've never understood why it works, it just does.

This is exactly what I do.

For something strictly diatonic, minor and natural minor,
something like III is just fine. C minor, III does the job for Eb. But when things become more complicated,then I need bIII, in case I want to move to Ebm to do a quick modulation. Then I can go bIII to bIIIm, then move somewhere else, then zip back to Cm, which I would make explict with Im.

All upper case is more flexible when combined with the same symbols we use for LCs (letter chords), because then we can do X, Xm, Xdim, Xaug, Xm7b5, and we can also show root with a number.

So i6/4 (Cm/G in C minor) becomes Im/5. This is what I teach. I don't care if it is standard because we don't READ RNs in charts most of the time.
When the chords are diatonic VII7 tells me all I need to know even if I'm in an unfamiliar key, like G-flat. When the music get more complicated letter chords tell me how the chord relates to other local keys in the circle of fifths - RNs don't.

I frequently use lower case Romans for minor chords, but I'm just as likely to use upper case and know from the key whether it's major or minor but when a piece is modulating, Romans make life harder rather than easier.

Thanks, Gary. I just played it at the piano and figured I wouldn't want to write a song around it. I'm sure it would be quite different in context. I was very rash!

I'll look for it later. I'm about 99% sure it is in the Liszt B Minor Sonata, but I've never played it and do not know the score.

That's gonna give me a jolt! I've analysed that piece(*) many times (not harmonically but in use of material - the five themes) and it's one of my absolute favourites. I play stretches of it for fun.

(*) The B minor not the Bb minor

http://conquest.imslp.info/files/im..._-_S178_Sonata_in_B_minor__Schirmer_.pdf

For the Liszt, looking now...

Got it!!!

P. 10 in the score, P 12 in the pdf file:

Third line. Look for "a tempo", "dolce" then third measure in:

LH: G B D# F#--->>G B E

Gaug (maj7)--->>Em/G

Key is D major, so the Gaug(maj7) is functioning as V (B D# F#) of iii or IIIm.

That's scary: I just scanned the score, found the chord instantly, then put this famous war-horse in the WRONG key!!!

Answer 1: I was right, it's quite different in context.

Answer 2: It's different when you spread the chord!

Answer 3: I never liked that bit!

Seriously, good job for finding it and remembering where you'd come across it. I'm really impressed!

I didn't get to this yesterday. Since I saw one answer, that being of using a variety of things for a variety of situations or angles. I think that is the direction I'm going personally.

Roman numerals themselves: I understand that they describe function related to the place a chord has in key - function meaning a role. For example the V chord is the "dominant", and it plays a given role, and has a strong feel to it in that role. Or if in C major we have D G7 C, then if I see D as V/V going to V going to I, then I'm seeing the strong movements that the function of a V entails. It has meaning. Further, the RN's help me keep track where are are roles which are related to these kinds of relationships.

Other times stuff is happening within music that is outside of roles, and if we still try to give RN names to everything, we tie ourselves into knots giving roles when maybe there aren't any. It's sort of saying "the butcher of the lawyer of the sister whose husband is the uncle of my great grandfather's mistress" (V/V/V/V/V/V/V/IV....). rather than saying "Bob". Dm is "Bob".

My background is an old pre-Kodaly solfege learned in some primary grade. Major scales were Do to Do, and (natural) minor scales were La to La. Therefore key signatures and relative majors/minors are second nature. I also learned that it gave me a sense of function: "So Do" implies the V-I movement; Ti Do also implies part of V-I. This also has a danger, because "Ti" is also part of IIIm (iii). --- In a minor scale, however, I would hear V-Im as "Mi La" since the tonic was La. When I worked with 4-part harmony, this presented a problem for hearing V-I in my head. It was disorienting, initially. Eventually I could use it, but minors are slower than majors if I do four part harmony while using my internal ear.

Eventually I realized that in my old system, I am continually within a dual awareness. While working in minor keys I was simultaneously aware of the relative major. When hearing La Mi for V-Im, I was also aware that those notes were VI(m)-IIIm in the relative major. Except music doesn't tend to go along that path so it doesn't serve me in the 21st century. I'd do fine among the monks of the Middle Ages.

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The alternative notation where you see Eb in Cm in terms of the parallel (tonic) major, also has a duality. The suggestion here is to see Eb as bIII because Em is the IIIm of C major. It reflects what is probably a more common reality in music, where majors and minors shimmer back and forth. You could argue that Cm has its own signature, which also gives us that Eb, but often music modulates and we don't have these signatures. Plus in music you'll have music that has modulated to C major and then the composer makes the same thing play in C minor because it sounds cool that way. This systems works.

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I would also want to use other systems, for seeing other aspects of music. Sarnecki has added figured bass as well as movable Do solfege, and also letter name chords. (I've been tempted to learn to play from figured bass the way they did in the Baroque age).

I was close to abandoning Solfege. Then last night I did an exercise that featured bass notes (not written that great, I suspect), RN's "teaching" sequence, and three starting notes in the soprano that boxed everything in. Finally I wrote solfege names underneath each bass notes / RN - i.e. if they had a V6, then "Ti" was in the bass - V has So Ti Re, I knew I had So and Re available. Once I had that written down I could get at a melody. It was a reference I needed, and it gave me a particular orientation.

The general idea ---- as many angles as possible. Good idea or bad?

I like lots of different angles.

I don't associate roman numerals with function. Maybe partly because I don't consciously hear function; maybe because the way we learned them, we just used them as labels for chords. For example in the key of C major, if I met (say) G7 Em7 I would happily call the G7 "V7" even though it's not functioning in the usual V7-I cadence.

This is similar to how "dominant seventh" chord just means, to me, any major triad with a minor seventh added. For example, in C minor, I would be happy to call B7 a dominant seventh chord. I gather that major triad with minor seventh is often just called a seventh chord (or is it seven chord)? I'm willing to use that too, but it's awkward in what I've been writing about. I've tried to say "types of seventh chords" when I mean the whole set of possibilities for the seventh in a chord: diminished, minor, or major. And then I've tended to avoid calling the dominant seventh chord anything, because plain "seven" could be confusing in context, but I know that for some people "dominant seventh" has the additional connotation that the chord is acting as V7 and leading to the tonic. So I've tended to refer to them by symbol, e.g. VII7.

Glad you clarified Richard, exactly where these visits are taking place.

I believe I referenced all of these -- albeit not in the correct order -- and had no mention of minors in this iteration ...



What I was clearly missing was in understanding whether in major or minor as the 7th pertain to both.

Seems we will need more than just the 7th though, to determine major or minor.

This is where I think I can now make more sense of where the other chords may help.

Which sonatina, which movement, are we working on?

Still no 5, movement 1 ... I'm a slow learner