Group 1
Welcome to the latest TWO WEEK INTENSIVE on tonebase!
For the next two weeks we will be working through assignments given by Ben Laude to improve your playing and understanding of Schubert!
Pianists of all levels are welcome.
More Detailed instructions coming soon!
- Sign-Up : December 1st - 4th
- Course Period: December 4th -15th
- Class Size: ALL are welcome!
- Optional check-In via Zoom: December 12th at 11am PT
Click here to join the meeting!
Assignment #1
ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS (WEEK 1)
- Watch the ABOVE video, which will serve as a crash course in chromatic harmony in preparation for your assignment.
- If you have no idea what Iâm talking about in the video, check out these materials to get up to speed:
- Pre-requisite/review course:
- Course: Music Theory Basics
- Other helpful tonebase resources:
- Livestream: Harmonic Analysis Crash Course
- Forums thread: Improve Your Harmonic Analysis with Ben Laude
- Pre-requisite/review course:
- If you have no idea what Iâm talking about in the video, check out these materials to get up to speed:
- Perform a harmonic analysis on Schubertâs Moment Musical #6 (A Section only; you can stop at the Trio):
- Label chords with roman numerals
- Mark cadences (half cadence: ends on V; authentic cadence: V resolves to I)
- Identify the following chromatic devices:
- Secondary dominant
- Augmented 6th
- Modal mixture
- Chromatic mediant
- Common-tone modulation
- Optional: Perform a harmonic analysis on a Schubert piece of your choice (or target specific passages from pieces youâre curious about)
â Donât expect to get everything right! This is an advanced harmonic analysis. The whole point of the TWI is to dive into the deep end of Schubertâs harmony and formâŚ
â Ask questions in the forum! I will be replying to user questions, and weâll be going over the whole thing in next weekâs Zoom meeting.
â For more experienced users, I do recommend analyzing the recommended study piece (and helping your fellow TWIs); but you may want to spend your time on another Schubert piece youâre already working on.
Schubertâs piano music
The âeasiestâ of Schubertâs piano music are probably his collections of Waltzes, Ländler, and other dances. These capture the spirit of Schubert the dancer, although they arenât representative of his harmonic/compositional exploration, so I donât recommend them for this TWI. Instead, you should take a look through Schubert's core piano repertoire, most of which is listed here:
Level 6-8
- Moment musicals
- Two Scherzi, D. 593
- Impromptus op 90, op 142
- 3 Klavierstucke
Level 6-10
- Sonatas
Level 11
- Wanderer Fantasy
Feel free to venture beyond the solo piano music!
ZOOM CHECK- IN with Ben!
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This course is particularly timely for me because I decided to start learning the B-flat sonata about a month ago, so really looking forward to delving into the details of Schubert's harmonic language.
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Bryan Coryell I've been going through it again and it's unbelievable. I can't wait to talk about the development of the first movement.
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Ben Laude It's a masterpiece and the first movement in particular is overflowing with some of the most beautiful musical ideas. The first movement development has one of my favorite moments in all piano music (I don't want to spoil you discussion).
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Bryan Coryell Spoil away! Interested to see your analysis.
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Ben Laude Okay, here it goes. There's a climax in the development in D minor (m. 182). After that, the music settles down, still in the key of D minor. It's as if something horrifying has happened and now he's shell-shocked, trapped in D minor. Schubert tries a few of the exposition themes, but not matter what he tries, he can't escape D minor.
And then, after more than 20 bars of D minor, the harmony shifts for 6 bars to B-flat and the theme is presented ppp. Because we've been in D minor for so long, we don't hear B-flat as the tonic, but as the submediant of D minor, where Schubert's trapped. It's like a bittersweet memory appearing nostalgically out of the darkness. Schubert's use of modal borrowing (G-flat from B-flat minor) to make the subdominant E-flat minor adds to that quality. It also relates back to Schubert's use of the key of G-flat in the exposition. Schubert also highlights the harmonic shift to B-flat by varying his presentation of the theme. In D minor, he presented the theme in the version starting on the third--F in D minor. When the harmony shifts to B-flat, he presents the original version of the theme from the exposition beginning on the tonic note of B-flat and with a simpler accompaniment.
Then, as quickly as B-flat appeared, it's gone and the harmony shifts back to D minor. But this final presentation of the theme cadences, not in D minor, as before, but on an F dominant 7 chord, the dominant of the tonic B-flat. And sure enough, the music transitions from there into the recapitulation in B-flat. It's as though Schubert found something in that moment of light, brief and tinged with darkness as it was, that finally got him out of D minor.
It's a brief passage and you'll miss it if not paying attention. But, to me, it's pure magic of the kind only Schubert could create. I've often heard it said that Schubert's music is sad when it's in the minor, but in the major, it's tragic. When B-flat appears out of D minor in this passage, we hear that the music is in the major, but we certainly don't feel it as happy or joyous. That complexity of emotional expression is part of what makes Schubert's music, to me, so incredible.
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Bryan Coryell that's beautiful, I love your description and I agree that moment is spectacular. I wanted to add one observation that just supports your ideas even more, and that's that â up until this point in the piece â that moment is the first time we've seen triple-piano.
This whisper also comes right after D minor has begun to colonize the theme, even though the left hand seems very uncomfortable with that â given all its squirming around in 189-190:
The pianississimo whispered harmony in the proper tonality is like some kind of angelic voice in your head, reminding your of where you're from and where you belong. So, when D minor starts callously singing the main theme again, this time the left hand find its way out:
And all it took was reharmonizing the E-natural with a "V of V" instead of a "V of iii"!
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Ben Laude Thank you for the additional thoughts. One if the great things about music, and one if the things that makes Schubertâs music so wonderful, is that thereâs always more to learn and discover. Iâve spent considerable time with this passage and never noticed the additional connections and points you made. I love your points about the anxious left hand and the way Schubert uses the common tone E in the A7 and C7 chords to reharmonize the passage and take us from D minor back to B-flat. Thank you for sharing!
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Hi Ben and Group 1 friends!
Looking forward to this challenge! I can't say I remember everything from the earlier TWI on harmonic analysis months and months ago, but it will be very interesting to apply that to Schubert's music, as I am trying to learn all the movements of my very first Schubert sonata!
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Natalie Peh Are you talking about my harmony TWI from August 2022? That's somewhere in the archives. What sonata are you learning?
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Ben Laude yes, I think it was the third ever TWI. This one:
https://piano-community.tonebase.co/category/improve-your-harmonic-analysis-with-ben-laude
I'm learning Schubert's Sonata in A major, D 959 at the moment. I'm finding it a challenge to practice it properly because the music is so beautiful I don't feel like stopping to fix anything! :D
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Natalie Peh Oh gosh I know that feeling. Had you played the "little A major" before, or did you go straight to the big leagues?
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Ben Laude I went straight for the big one! But I would like to learn the little A major next, it sounds very beautiful too!
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Hello, my Schubert-loving friends! Like you, I really look forward to the next two weeks of learning and exploring. Always worthwhile, of course, but so much more worthwhile in a group!
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Monika Tusnady Agreed. I certainly wouldn't be doing any of this without the group!
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Great video, Ben.
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Hi everyone, I'm excited to join the group though my music theory knowledge is woefully lacking. I keep starting to learn but then can't maintain the discipline for it to stick and continue. I think joining this intensive will make me more accountable and help me focus on it for once. On that note, 2023 has been the year of Schubert for me so I couldn't pass this up. The last piece Schubert piece I learned to play was Moment Musicaux no.6. It was so interesting to play that I wished to have a better handle on music theory to understand and appreciate it better. On that note, this crash course went way over my head though I enjoyed it very much and has me eager to learn. Some day, I'll get it-- hopefully soon! Off to the Basics I go...
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Diane Shim Thanks for sharing, and don't hesitate to ask questions!
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Diane Shim I decided to learn that one this week, also! It is so gorgeous.
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Hi, I watched the video and then went back watching the Music Theory Course. As a returning pianist, it's like learning a new language as a lot of the jargon like Circle of Fifths & 2-5-1 weren't a thing when I was a child struggling with the big learning gap between rudiments and harmony.
Having only recently just learned Schubert's Impromptu No. 4 from Op. 90, and received a very satisfying masterclass from Silvie Cheng (Cheng2(squared) Duo), I'm considering options for my next Schubert piece. I read through the Moment Musicaux piece, which I have not heard before, and it's too
for me right now. Given this stress on harmonic analysis and my having only worked on analyzing only a few chords in No. 4's Trio part that were giving me memory problems, I think perhaps a reasonable takeaway from this TWI is if I can figure out how to play Happy Birthday in the style of Schubert.-
Hi Grace You're welcome to as much or as little of the recommended piece as you wish, or focus your analytic energies on more of your Impromptu (which is very interesting).
Actually, I like your idea of attempting to play Happy Birthday in the style of Schubert. IF you want to make that a project for the two weeks, it would be fun (and maybe others could get on board too!). BUT to do that, you'll still need to grasp some of the concepts we'll be looking at in Schubert's characteristic use of chromatic harmony. Leaving the jargon aside (music theory terms can be unnecessarily intimidating and distracting), it's worth taking seriously and â for example â trying to analyze specific spots in either the Impromptu or the recommended piece. Then you could try employing the same devices in Happy Birthday.
The overarching goal over these two weeks is not to understand Schubert's harmony in the abstract, but to understand in terms of learning and interpreting the music in performance - and I encourage you to go about that in whatever way you think is most effective for you.
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Hi Fellow Group Oners,
I honestly have a bit of a poor history with Schubert. Most of my exposure to his music has just been the millions of times I played Ave Maria with the kids choir at our church. but, I am exited to get into more of his music.
I would say Im pretty good with theory (or at least I used to be) But I think I have some gaps in my knowledge and Im sure Ill realize that theres a whole nother world of theory Im oblivious to. Anyways, Cant wait to learn more about Schubert and theory!
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Abel Gershfeld I think it's wonderful that you will become more acquainted with Schubert beyond Ave Maria, which is of course not actually Schubert's original version (the text in Schubert's version is different). Like Ben Laude said in his video, I feel that Schubert is an underrepresented composer in the concert programming I see. I hope you enjoy his music as much as I do.
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Hi everyone, Iâm not sure if Iâm on the right track with this. Iâm not clear about the difference between a secondary dominant and an augmented sixth chord. The B-flat 7 in bar 6 is a secondary dominant, right? And the G-major 7 with d flat in bass (bar 10) is an augmented sixth?? Will be very thankful for help!
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Andrea Buckland Yes, the B-flat 7 (4-3 inversion) is a secondary dominant of E-flat (dominant of the tonic A-flat). The chord in bar 10 is an augmented 6th chord (d-flat to b natural being the augmented 6th interval). This is often referred to as a French augmented 6th and is in the key of F minor (the augmented 6th interval resolves to C, which is the dominant of of F minor. and the chord does in fact resolve to a C major chord). F minor is the relative minor to the tonic of A-flat. There are 3 types of augmented 6th chords, Italian, French, and German, depending on the notes that accompany the augmented 6th interval. Happy to explain more if I'm not getting too technical. Ben can correct me if I've said anything inaccurate.
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Thank you Bryan Coryell ! You are spot-on.
Andrea A few more thoughts about what might be confusing about those two chords: first of all, as I mention in the video, Augmented 6th Chords are pre-dominants, meaning they move to V. But V in what key? Usually it's the main key you're in, but in THIS case, Schubert actually borrows an augmented 6th chord from F minor (as Bryan mentioned), so it prepares not the dominant of Ab, but the dominant of F minor (vi). That dominant of F minor (C major) is technically a secondary dominant of the vi chord in Ab, but Schubert never ends up touching an F minor triad...
Bryan also mentioned that this particular augmented 6th is a "French 6th." That's true, but don't worry too much about what makes it a French 6th. Like Bryan said, you should just be on the lookout for the interval of an augmented 6th. If you see one, then that chord cannot be a dominant chord. Another thing that might have tripped you up here is that the right hand has what feels like a G dominant 7th (you even call it "G7 with Db in the bass). I'd be careful to think of it that way: the entire chord sounds together, and it's not a full G7 chord in the RH: it's missing the D-natural, and instead of a D-natural you get a Db in the bass.
Now let me leave theory-land for a moment to say: the strange use of a borrowed augmented 6th chord in this context has a specific musical/expressive effect. It's a striking answer to that opening motif the second time it comes around:: bars 1-2 (with pickup) are a question, 3-4 are an answer. But THIS TIME, there's a different answer, one that's more severe, more insistent (he really means it this time). Then he slips right back to Ab, relying on the common tone G between the C major chord and the E-flat dominant chord (V).
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Ben Laude Many thanks for the explanation, Ben and Bryan Coryell ! The piece is such a beauty and I love getting more conscientious about all the details of its magic.
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