Group 3

Chris Griffin  Fantastic. You know that Rameau was the one who basically invented the kind of music theory that led to this kind of harmonic analysis, which defines harmonies by their root (rather than by intervals above the bass). Very appropriate that we'll look at some of his music, then.

Want to analyze up to the double bar and we'll take a look? (Or try the whole thing, up to you.)

Ben Laude 

HI Ben,

I have attached my first attempt at analysis. Not sure how to handle the a

A major chord. 

Chris Griffin Sorry for the delay. Crazy week for me. Here's some feedback:

• First, I recommend using the convention of labeling minor or diminished roman numerals lowercase, and major roman numerals uppercase. So, for a D minor piece like this one, your chord scale (using harmonic minor, raised 7) would look like this:  i iiº III IV V VI viiº
• Bar 3 / Beat 1: While the E and G of the chord could belong to a V7, functionally this sounds like a pre-dominant chord, not a dominant chord. It's better to label it as iiº6, which means the diminished triad built on scale degree 2, but in first inversion. It's missing the B-flat, but if you at a B-flat in during that harmony I think you'll find that it sounds correct.
• Bar 3 / Beat 3: I mentioned the "harmonic minor" scale above. You must understand that in minor we raise the 7th scale degree in order to create a leading tone to help resolve the music back to the tonic. Watch my lesson on the minor scale and other modes in my Music Theory Basics Course, because I go into this in depth. That A major harmony is very simply: V. The C is raised to a C-sharp in harmonic minor, creating a major harmony built on the 5th scale degree. This is a crucial harmony in D minor, so it's absolutely essential that you understand this.
• Bar 6: Similarly, if you raise the 7th to C#, you'll also get a diminished triad built on C#, known as viiº. That's the harmony on beat 2.
• Bar 7: Again, that's either V or viiº (label it either way, because C#-E is found in both harmonies).
• Bar 8: There are passing tones, but not over the tonic harmony. The A and E on the strong downbeat in this bar signal a dominant (A major) harmony. You'll notice that if you add a C# to the mix in the right hand of that bar, it will sound good.
• For the rest of the phrase until the double bar, the same feedback above applies. See if you can re-analyze it especially with the knowledge of the harmonic minor chord scale in mind.
• Looking ahead to the next section, can you tell what key Rameau modulates to? Look at the cadence points, and look for a new V-I.

Good work, and again my apologies for the late reply!

Randi That Czerny is a good place to get familiar with analyzing harmony. It lays out the harmonies very clearly with regular arpeggiation.

The Chopin is in A minor - I'm assuming this is the one you want to do? Thee is an E minor waltz that is bigger.

Ben Laude Oh, of course. My mistake. Yes, A minor. 🤦‍♀️ Thanks.

Robert The Chopin will be great to look at. There's so much nuance going on "under the hood" of that piece. I'd love to hear Eric Wen's take on it as well.

Maybe just start with the first couple phrases? Or, if you're quick, do the whole thing and we'll work through it bit by bit.

Happy to help with the Sarasate as well. Is it Zigeunerweisen?

Ben Laude Oh to clarify, it's Sarasate's violin/piano transcription of this Chopin Nocturne. The piano accompaniment is pretty simple technically (basically just the left hand), so thought it'd be a good opportunity to give myself a challenge with the music theory.

Here's my attempt at marking up the first phrase, want to see if I'm on the right track before I go further. I added the roman numerals and highlighted notes outside the key in blue. My main questions would relate to modal mixture. I identified some spots in orange where I think that's what going on, but please let me know if I've misidentified those bars or any of the chords throughout. Thank you so much!

Robert Sorry for the delay! It's been a crazy week for me.

Eric Wen and I broke down the first four bars of this Chopin in detail in the video below. Please watch (it's towards the end). I'll drop a couple of points of feedback here as well:

• Bar 1: I know why you chose "ivº", but you're not accounting for a crucial tone: D. Furthermore, you're counting the bass Eb in the harmony, when in fact this is just a pedal tone that on this beat is clashing against the harmony above it (it clashes with the D, which is a chord tone). The harmony is viiº7 over the tonic pedal tone. This is actually a borrowed chord from the parallel minor (Eb minor), hence the C-flat.
• Bar 1: The bass note in the last beat is actually just functioning as a passing tone to the next chord. So it's a bit misleading to call this I7. I don't hear a major 7th sonority so much as I hear a tonic chord with a bass note falling down from 1 to 7 and finally to 6 on the new harmony in bar 2.
• Bar 2: Indeed, you're tonicizing F minor and using the F harmonic minor chord scale to get there. But we don't call this modal borrowing. Rather, it's a straightforward secondary dominant chord: V7 / ii. Then on beat 3, the bass resolves early to F, but you still have an applied chord above it, in this case a viiº7 leading tone chord in F minor (hence the D-flat).
• Bar 3: Same thing, it's not modal mixture but a momentary tonicization of a diatonic triad in your Eb chord scale. Instead of ii, this time you get V7 / vi.
• Bar 3: Stack up the chord in 3rds on the final beat and what do you get? A-natural in the bass, with C, Eb, and Gb above it. Do you see that? That means we have an A fully diminished 7th chord, which functions as yet another applied secondary leading tone chord, this one moving us to our dominant, so you'd label it: viiº7 / V.
• Bar 4: Yes, it's V7 with some incredible non chord tones - passing tones and upper neighbors. And you can hear the Eb as suspended from the previous harmony.

I hope this helps! It's such an amazing four bars, it's not wonder the piece is so famous. See if this analysis can help your voicing and sense of direction when you're playing it now.

Harriet Kaplan Sorry for the delay! It's been a crazy week. I owe you this feedback:

• Your analysis is a little bit blurry, but I'll do my best in responding to what you've written.
• First of all, please write your roman numerals below the staff. Harmony grows from the bass up, so it's better to label harmonies near the bass line.
• The opening 4 bars are wild! But, they don't actually need a wild analysis. It's simply functioning as a prolonged dominant, with an octave built on scale degree 5 with its walls closing in chromatically on itself. So, I'd actually call the first 5 bars "V7" with lots of chromatic passing tones.
• Bars 6-8: Nice work recognizing all the secondary dominants! I try to say away from "five of five of..." Instead, I would just label it a "circle of 5ths" progression. Chopin jumps on the C5 train and rides it all the way to F minor. It's a bit of a fake out, because he of course wants reach the dominant of B-flat minor, which he finally does at the FF climax in bar 11. But the circle of 5ths progression uses the diatonic chord scale of F minor (yet, it's not a modulation, so I'd say he's tonicizing minor-v through the circle of 5ths).
• The next phrase repeats itself, with more non chord tones that can be understood contrapuntally. This is Chopin as his most ingenious.
• Note that after the double bar, Chopin is modulating to D-flat, the III in B-flat minor.

Nice work, again. You seem to have a good grasp of labeling harmonies, so the next level is to always be aware of function. What is Chopin actually doing/where is he going? Keeping these questions in mind will help you avoid zooming in too far and over-labeling notes and harmonies that are actually just embellishments of the primary functioning harmony (like the prolonged V in the opening bars).

Ben Laude thank you. It's been so long since I've had to do a full analysis that I'm very rusty. I appreciate your taking the time to look at what I did.

Don Allen you haven't missed it. It's in 10 minutes!

priscillayam 

priscillayam here is my recording , I still shoot through ba from Db to D natural to the major ! ananlsis also helps me when to change pedal.  Thank You.

priscillayam Hi Priscilla. My apologies for the delay! I had a crazy week. Here's some feedback:

• I can't read all of your analysis, but I listened to your spoken recording. Thank you for making that! You're thinking about the music in the right way, listening for cadence points and determining what notes have more significance than what other notes.
• In the first 9 bars, I just wanted to point out what luscious harmonies Chopin chooses above the tonic pedal tone in the bass. Of course there's the D-flat harmony, with the chromatic neighbor tones in the RH melody, but then in bar 5 you get what could be labeled as a viiº7 / V, which then doesn't resolve to V. Instead, Chopin slides the A-naturals up to B-flat, proving that it was just a ii chord all along, with a heavily accented chromatic passing tone, A-natural in both hands, connecting the A-flat to B-flat.
• This melts into a dominant 7th at the beginning of bars 7 and 8, with two delicious harmonies in between that help to prolong the dominant. You basically get a iiº7 - V7 - I, but with an extra embellished ii chord (the one with the B-double-flat), which I would call iiø7 (borrowed from D-flat minor!!!).
• Good observation that the F in the soprano of bar 9 needs to be pronounced enough to last into the B-flat minor chord. This is called a common-tone modulation, and Chopin makes that common tone between D-flat and B-flat minor really sing.
• Bar 13: You're exactly right, the D-natural transforms our Bbm chord into a B-flat dominant 7th chord. But you said it "goes back to major." But, if you're thinking longer term, you modulateIt's actually V7/Ebm.
• What Chopin is really doing here when he first modulates to Bbm is setting up an extended circle of 5ths progression. You could even hear it long-range as never leaving D-flat, but just tonicizing Bbm (the vi chord), which then turns into the dominant of ii (Ebm), which then turns into the dominant of Ab, and after a lot of chromatic noodling on a prolonged dominant, we return to D-flat.

Regarding your performance. It's really lovely! You're being very sensitive to your harmonies. The next step is to start being even more conscious of your longer phrases. For example, you emphasize the bass notes on every half bar in bars 7-8, which feels a little sluggish to me - it takes some of the magic away from the arrival in bar 9. I know those harmonies are really juicy, but remember that it's just a prolonged dominant in 7-8, so I would actually try to keep it flowing (don't hesitate as much before/after every bass notes... choose one, maybe the downbeat of bar 8, to help emphasize the color and shifting bass, but keep your eyes on the prize, which is the return to D-flat).

Similarly in the circle of 5ths sequence beginning in bar 9, pay attention to Chopin's long phrases. This is his hint to you that these are just prolonged harmonies on the way back to the tonic. So, right now, you're leaning on every half bar. The Bbm harmony, its dominant, then the Bbm harmony again, then its dominant again, etc, then the same on Ebm. This makes it hard to hear where Chopin is going, because it's giving too much significance to local harmonic changes that are not structural. I know that every harmony is juicy, and that technically it's hard not to pause a bit on those bass notes, but practice in a way that controls your sound and keeps the flow so it feels like you're sending us on a much longer line through the circle of 5ths.

By the way, this is a VERY high level suggestion. I learned this piece last year and struggled with exactly what I'm telling you right now. But, I discovered that you have to be really restrained in a piece like this that has slowly unfolding harmonies!

Ben Laude hello Ben, thank you so much . This is more than what I have hoped for. I did noticed I was stopping at every base note so much until I recorded myself. Now your analysis has given me so much to work for, it is exciting for me. I can’t wait to improve it. It is the long line I don’t know how to do it and you have helped me so much. I played this piece when I came to the the USA for grad school , and have not looked at it till now.

Thank you for all your time.  As Piano head, I want you to know that all the workshops such as Dominic’s yesterday for how to play chords,  they are invaluable, gave us so much tips despite I have not play those pieces before and am not going to play Beethoven’s 4th anytime soon! All of the master classes , workshops are a great resources for those of us who wants to improve. What a great job!  Have a great summer. Priscilla