HARMONIC EXPANSIONS

CHAPTER 3: 6/4 LINEAR EXPANSIONS
3.1 Introduction

In Chapter 2 the fundamental harmonic progression was expanded with just one nonharmonic tone at a time, usually in the soprano. In contrast in Chapter 3 the chords of this progression will usually be expanded by two simultaneous nonharmonic tones, one a 6th above the bass and the other a 4th above. Three of the four 6/4 expansions in this chapter, the cadential, the passing and the neighbor (or pedal) 6/4's, will be derived in this way. The fourth 6/4, the arpeggiated 6/4, is an exception. It will result from an expansion by consonant skips in the bass, not by nonharmonic tones.

These combinations of notes will often sound like second inversion triads. The 6 and 4 are in fact the same intervals which form this inversion. To illustrate the ambiguity between simultaneous nonharmonic tones and triads, the red notes at the end of the above video are nonharmonic with the respect to the first green chord, but the red notes themselves also form a triad. Many factors related to the musical context and the individual listener influence whether these new notes are heard as a chord or as nonharmonic tones--and what we call them will depend on our level of analysis (see page 3.3).

Comments? Click here.