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In Reply to: I'm impressed... posted by C.B. on April 8, 2005 at 03:58:24:
Key progressions of the Bruckner 9 courtesy Michael Steinberg of the SFSO.Few 19th century composers go as far afield as Bruckner does in this work. The first movement gear change is accomplished as is his wont: by calling a general time out, then restarting in the new distant key. D minor to A major--you'd need some Looney Tune transitions to do that with normal development.
Follow Ups:
D minor to A major is no big deal, since A major is the dominant of D. In making that modulation, Bruckner is very much the "Viennese classicist", especially since it is the key of the 2nd subject. The one that is a "bit of a stretch" is the modulation from D minor to F# major in the second movement.
In D min. the more "correct" sub-dominant chord would be a G-minor, although G major is a commonly used alternative in indigenous American popular music of the late 20th century. For an interesting musical excursion exploring both voicings, listen to "House of the Rising Sun" by the British musical ensemble known as "The Animals".See also the above mentioned composition for the correct use of the dominant Amaj7 chord. These voicings met with astonishment and derision when they were first introduced, but since that time have become thoroughly assimilated into the American vernacular. Indeed Mr. Burden and the Animals, despite their British citizenship, are now regarded as elder statesmen of the 20th century American popular music movement.
...straight over everyone's head. Notwithstanding the fact, as you well know, that Eric and his mates did not write that song. BTW, as a crappy guitarist, I always played it in Am. So Dmaj is where the uplift occurs.
And I always thought it's in A minor. Am I mistaken? And does anybody have a correct chord progression for it? I'm not sure but I think it's:Amin C D F
Amin C E7
Amin C D F
A E A E
Hey, good luck with that. I'll keep quiet, and actually read all of it to learn but, if the forum were to go that way, no one would play. Also, like it or not, you still do NOT need to know this stuff to either create or enjoy music -- but that's an old, beat-up topic. KNOWING IT IS BETTER (I am merely jealous!:-)I COULD see TWO new forums popping up alongside this one:
Musicology -- Focus upon formal academic themes...theory, history, culture...even instruments (I just got the book "A History of the Harpsichord" by Kottick -- awesome and geeky!:-).
Music & Machines -- Music and computers, NOT (necessarily) "computer music". Notation software, software, algorithms, strengths of the approach, weaknesses, comparative analysis of processes/procedures blah, blah, blah.
Both meaningful forums for a distinct audience and range of participants, but neither likely to sustain a critical mass.
You're right about this particular thread, this is quite a gathering of musicological honey bees all in one place!
and it looks like its already devolved into pointless exercise in chest-beating. This is most explicitly NOT what this forum should be about. This thread is a complete waste of bandwidth.
A true Dominant is by definition a major triad with a minor seventh--a very specific chord structure with a definite relationship to the tonic chord. The main features are the 3rd and 7th of the dominant, a tritone whose members are 1/2 step below and above the root and third of the tonic chord respectively. This assumes a major tonic--in minor the 4-3 movement is a whole step, not a half.There are a million exceptions to every rule, and this one is more fluid than most, but a true dominant chord follows these guidelines. The practice of using this non-diatonic V chord in minor keys is one of the main reasons we have a codified "harmonic minor" scale, which in reality is as often as not used interchangeably with natural minor and "melodic" minor, which is really just another corruption of the natural version used for convenience, usually to strengthen the tonality of a tonic that otherwise is harmonically weakened by the lack of a leading tone. Some go so far as to say (and I tend to agree) that melodic minor as an actual scale resource doesn't even really exist.
I don't mean to talk over people's heads with this, but this distinction is an important one. The diatonic v chord of natural minor cannot impart tonality on the tonic like the altered, true dominant. They do not function in the same way.
dh
"the note in a mode or scale which, in traditional harmonic procedures, most urgently demands resolution upon the tonic". As you say, the dominant chord in the minor mode always has a raised third (although not the seventh--that is strictly optional), and the V-I cadence or resolution of (major) dominant to tonic (major or minor) is the usual, expected one in traditional harmony. Minor dominant to minor tonic sounds incomplete and "modal"--and in any event was (I'll stick my neck out here) never used by the great symphonists such Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, etc.Which is why I made the statement in the first place that A major in a D minor piece such as Bruckner's Ninth is completely normal and logical, and not a "weird" modulation. As discussed previously in this forum, the relationship of tonic to dominant is the structural cornerstone of sonata form, and Bruckner's use of it is lifted right out of the playbook of Mozart and Beethoven. The only thing that might be said is the progression from tonic minor to relative major (D minor to F major) is more often heard in minor-mode pieces, and one would have expected Bruckner to have followed this practice. But, of course, Bruckner was not your average Viennese composer.
I get so used to every chord having at least four notes, I forget that the seventh really is optional in the dominant chord. Jeez. And yes, exactly right, the minor v-i progression is modal, and not really even a functional harmonic progression, strictly speaking.While not the more often used relative Major, modulation to the major V is hardly odd. I can't cite examples, but it's hard for me to imagine that even in Bruckner's time it was really that out there.
dh
> > the minor v-i progression is modal, and not really even a functional harmonic progression, strictly speaking < <You should tell that to the smooth-jazz/electronica folks who pretty much use the v-min7/v-min9 as if it were the dominant. It does work but it has become such a cliche I can't stand it any more :-)
-C.
Next time I'll post from my piano keyboard.We only have seven whole and five half tones in an octave and all are related to the others in some way. But you gotta admit that's a large interval (D minor to A maj) and a bit of a jolt to the listener.
Of course, D minor to F# major is even stranger.
doesn't come from a melodic leap or from the distance between tonal centers. It comes from the closeness (or lack thereof) in the makeup of the two scales in question. If the two keys have many notes in common, they are "related" scales. A modulation to a distant key is then a modulation to a key which has very few if any notes in common with the "home" key. Let's look at d (natural) minor to A Major:DEFGABbC
ABC#DEF#G#you'll notice that these two scales have 3 notes in common, so they aren't that far apart. The F# in the A scale implies a shift to D Major that softens the blow of that shift. Add to that the "Dominant" relationship pointed out another post above, and this is really a very "inside" a key change--not at all distant.
d minor to F# Major is further out, but maybe still not as totally foreign as first seems if we consider context.
DEFGABbC
F#G#A#BC#D#E#Assuming we were using the "natural" form of the minor scale, EVERY SINGLE note of the diatonic scale has changed--there's no getting around the fact we have shifted to one of the most remote keys possible. HOWEVER, we still have the F# in the new key. The "changing minor to major" factor is here mostly overridden by the siesmic shift in harmonic environment--the D# and A# work directly against this effect by destroying the other remnants of the d minor chord, so it's probably negligible or very short-lived. Still, the F# may have been a commonality between these modulations that Brahms was aware of or may have manipulated. (I don't have a score handy, and this isn't my favorite music, so I can't say for sure but this is something that leaps out at me right away.)
Hope that answers more questions than it raises. I had fun writing, anyway....at the expense of my moving effort. Good thing my wife doesn't read this board....
dh
Severius,Two points:
First, I think there are probably two reasons for the success of the relationship between dm and F#. This is a stretch, but bear with me for a second. Look at the two chords DFA and F#A#C#. A chord which is powerfully related to dm is A, the dominant triad. In the A triad AC#E, the most important note (or second most, depending on which school of playing you come from) is the C#, which defines the major quality of the chord. Jazzers have this figured out pretty well - in their world you can get by with only two notes of a chord, the 3rd and 7th, because they function as a shorthand telling you the quality of the triad and seventh, thus spelling out everything your ear needs to know about function. As I said, the F# triad contains the third of the A triad, which is the dominant to dm. Secondly, there is only a half step difference from (notes) f to f# and a to a#. When these chords are juxtaposed, this produces a voice-leading that the ear can not help but be pleased by.The second relationship that pertains is that of the chromatic third, which technically dm and F# do not have to one another. Because those two triads share no notes, they actually don't even qualify as a doubly chromatic third. However, it might be informative to get generous and describe their relationship as "triply chromatic thirds" because the third relationship still pertains between their roots. In fact, I'm one that thinks that (chords) dm implies DM and F# implies f# - keys function as areas, not scales. In this thinking, there is still a strong tatste of that chromatic third relationship, which, as you pointed out, film scores and late romanticism have exploited the ears' affinity for.
Now I have a question for you. Do you hear F# as a "zingy" key when it is played alone, or is that only in relationship to other keys? To go further, do you identify Gb as a zingy key on a fixed pitch instrument like piano, and as a dark key when played on variable pitch instruments such as violin or trombone, when the players ought to be making minor adjustments to the pitch? I'm really curious, as I have only decent relative pitch, and can only hear those kind of key qualities in relationships.
By the way, keep on preaching the royal road!!
I'm pretty sure I don't have excellent relative pitch, but as a performer I do have excellent working knowledge of managing pitch. The world is making it easier on people like me these days - now people playing variable pitch instruments are seeking to actively de-temper chords as they play. A chord that is perfectly in tune "rings" in a way that your ear can discern seperate from pitch, giving me cues that tempered harmony simply does not. If you are playing, there is not really a way to get by anymore without engaging your brain and theory knowledge, at least in the world of brass players.
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