Lesson 4 Part 2 - Analysis: Beethoven's Bagatelle, op. 119, no I

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En provenance du cours de National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

243 notes

National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

243 notes

This course introduces students to strategies for style writing of common practice European art music. The issues of harmonic progression, voice leading, and texture are addressed in addition to relevant compositional concepts like repetition, variation, and elaboration. The course aims to offer a creative space even within the restrictions of stylistic emulation.

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Module Five

This module builds off of the concept of chord substitution that was introduced previously. However, this week we look at chords that are chromatic, rather than diatonic. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of chromaticism. Its simplest definition is the use of chords that are not part of the key of the passage in which they are used. One of the things that chromaticism helps to make possible is modulation to new keys, so sometimes people think that chromaticism is music that changes keys. That’s not completely true - although it is often the case. In Write Like Mozart we will look only at uses of chromatic harmony that do not cause modulation. (Modulation is a large topic that would take perhaps 2-3 weeks to properly cover, and we just don’t have the space here.) We will also get our feet wet with 2-voice counterpoint. We will look at writing 2:1 counterpoint, that is, 2 notes in the upper voice against 1 note in the lower voice. Counterpoint can go much deeper than this, but it is a subject on its own and also well beyond the space we have in this course. However, I did want to give some guidance in it because we will look at a Bagatelle by Beethoven this week in which he uses 2-voice counterpoint. Since this work could serve in part as a model for your own final project composition, I thought it would be good to take a bit of time to give you some insights into how to write simple 2-voice counterpoint.

Lesson 1 - Chromatic Substitutions: The Neapolitan 6 Chord9:14

Lesson 2 - Analysis: Schubert's Der Müller und der Bach8:02

Lesson 3 - Chromatic Substitutions: Augmented Sixth Chords12:53

Lesson 4 Part 1 - Analysis: Beethoven's Bagatelle, op. 119, no I13:09

Lesson 4 Part 2 - Analysis: Beethoven's Bagatelle, op. 119, no I11:27

Lesson 5 - Chromatic Substitutions: Borrowed Chords8:31

Rencontrer les enseignants

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

Okay. Now, we move on - one thing I wanna

point out before we even start doing analysis is,

you notice this phrase is basically homorhythmic homophoning.

This phrase is something else.

Now, this is an example of polyphony but it's a

bit different than the polyphony that we saw.

Polyphony we saw before was first of all three voices.

And this is only two voices.

We've got one voice and the right hand, one voice in the left hand.

The other thing is that this is really linear kind of polyphony.

The other is polyphony 'cause each voice had a distinct quality to it.

But this you would describe much more as counterpoint.

So, like that earlier when we elaborated those two very simple melodic,

those two simple lines of nine bars

into a phrase that was for solo instrument and piano accompaniment.

That was what we call one to one counterpoint.

And this is what we call two to one, which makes sense, right?

We call this or second species counterpoint.

You've got two notes against one note and in

the next video we'll talk about how to actually do this because I think, you know,

it would be fun for you to give it,

give a go at doing some basic two to one counterpoint.

Clearly we have some kind of five chord here so let's get our five in there.

And then we have, well,

this... this all looks like five and then we add in this which is,

well not an encore tone, it's actually the seventh.

So... but now it's in the bass so it's a four-two chord.

And then we get one in first inversion.

Look at this voice is being used to give us two notes not just one note.

So this gives us a third,

this gives us the root and the fifth.

Now we have two bars of five of some sort.

So this is five.

These are all... these are all chord tones.

And we analyze this as a five-four-three.

Going to a five-six-five and then one.

You say, "well what about this guy?"

Well, that's actually just an accented appoggiatura.

Again, accented, well not accented appoggiatoura.

This is a suspension,

this is our seven-six suspension.

I'll explain that in a second though,

but just to say that our,

for analysis purposes, these are our chord tones.

This A and C and that gives us lower and minor.

So that gives us two diminished to

six going to four-six.

Again, we need to look at,

you know, which are our chord tones, what makes the most sense.

Makes the most sense to analyze this as a passing tone.

And then we get something we're going to talk about

next week and I'm just going to analyze it right now.

Just so you can see it but you don't need to know this.

Just yet. And then we get five chords,

'cause we get the half cadence.

I read here, five of,

five of five that is-if we look at this we see that we have

A and C sharp or if we added the E on top of that we

have an A major chord but we're in the key of G minor.

So that's like a two chord but it's

a major chord in minor is supposed to be a diminished chord.

So the question arises,

how do we analyze this thing?

What we see is actually this thing is going to the five chord and this chord itself,

an A major chord,

is the fifth above the five chord.

And so it functions as

the dominant and first inversion

of the dominant and that's where we get this and we call it a five.

In this case we call it a five-six of five or more generally a five of five.

It's the dominance of the dominant.

Next week we're gonna talk about these.

I'll explain them. This is what we call a secondary dominant.

Just for fun I'll write that in.

A secondary dominant.

I'll talk more about it next week like,

I said but, but we do find these all over the place in classical music.

Hey, let's analyze our non-chord tones then.

And as I said that this is a suspension,

right, because here's the chord tone and how do we get into it?

We do nothing. How do we get out of it?

We move by step down.

That's a suspension, then we need to figure out what kind of suspension.

Well, we measure it against the bass.

The bass is a C and this is a B.

So that's a seventh and it resolves down by steps so that's a six.

So, this is what we call the suspended seven-six suspension.

Then we have the four chord with a passing tone,

step in, step out, same direction.

And this five of five with a passing tone.

This you might actually analyze as a seventh but passing tone.

Analyzed as a passing tone is acceptable as well.

Okay. Now what we need to do is scroll down a bit to get this fourth phrase,

'cause a fourth phrase clearly is gonna be different when we get to the end.

Right. Because this gives us a half cadence.

And this gives us a perfect authentic cadence.

So, there's... there's got to be some kind of change here.

But what we see is in

the very beginning it is basically the same so I'll do this fairly quickly.

This is gonna be the same five we get our five-four-two here.

One-six.

And same thing.

We have five-four-three going to five-six-five going to one.

Again, all of our non-chord tones are the same.

It's basically repetition.

Even this is two diminished... six... whoops,

that looks a little bit funny. Let me fix that.

This is a - is a chord tone.

So we just, we don't have to analyze it.

And, and in such a in such a case you know this this is really

our bass note and Beethoven's just decorating up like this some might say,

"Oh then you have to analyze this as like a two diminished six-four chord."

No, you don't.

We know we really getting the chord,

the harmonic rhythm is by beat.

And so it makes sense to just keep the harmonic rhythm the same.

There's no useful information given about the chord.

If we say that it's a six-four chord,

again we need to analyze it as some kind of six-four chord.

Is it a pedal six-four? Passing six-four?

Cadential six-four? It's none of the above.

So, in this case we just say that it's,

you know, it's just decoration,

it's just the movement of the bass.

This is gonna give us a one-six-four.

Not so clear again and this is going to get us five and then one,

I'll just write this in very quickly and we'll look at this.

One-six-four. And you say, "Well,

I'm not getting that because I'm getting five with a passing tone.

And then this is a one-six-four resolving down to a five.

So, the one-six-four takes place here I get that."

No, actually what's-what's going here is that this is actually

the... you probably treat this as a suspension so we get the- sorry.

Non-chord terms just for this bar 'cause all of this is

the same so we don't need to redo it but just for

this bar or this is gonna be the same as before. Okay.

But then we get this suspension,

and how do we describe the suspension?

Well honestly I'm not gonna try to,

I'm just gonna write down this as

suspension 'cause we don't really have a thing called a five-four

suspension but this really is sounding like a one-six-four,

it's missing the B flat but it's being hinted at,

the one-six-four is being hinted at so I just write this down as a suspension and

then we've got this carried over which is a four-three suspension.

Dud. Whoops. No. Or sud, no. How about sus.

Good. A four-three suspension.

And then resolving here.

This is how I would go about analyzing this again.

There are theorists that would come out and argue against

this analysis but I think when I listen to it I really hear

this too diminished six going to

one-six-four going to five going to one and then I need to start

explaining what's going on here and this is how I would explain the non-chord tones here.

There's one last thing I wanna talk about.

Some people might be a little confused.

So, I wanna clear up any confusion.

Well, I hope I can clear up confusion.

I call this a half cadence and then I went ahead and,

I went ahead and said this was

a secondary dominant and this was the dominant going to the tonic.

And so you say, you know in a way you say,

well this is a dominant going to the tonic,

isn't that a perfect authentic cadence?

Or at least in this case.

Well this is in first inversion and this is in the root.

So, we could say it's at least an imperfect authentic cadence.

Shouldn't you analyze it that way?

No. There will be times where that happens.

But in this case it doesn't make sense to do that.

Why?

We are not using the secondary dominant as a way to change key.

You'll find actually in classical music this is exactly how we

do change keys through the use of secondary dominants.

But here it's so brief and it's really just an act

of chromaticism inside of the original key.

When we get here we really do hear this as

a half cadence and then we need to explain it as a half cadence.

In this case it makes more sense to think about this chord as a kind of

altered two chord and that it's,

but in it's alteration it has this sort of secondary dominant function.

And then we land here.

We really do need to use our ears when we do analysis.

There will be times where you'll see a bunch of these

happening and then we get this and it sounds

like either an imperfect or perfect authentic cadence

and then we need to analyze it as such.

But when we land here this really sounds like a half cadence.

So it makes much more sense to analyze it as a half cadence.

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