Principles of Music: Secondary Dominants

[Music] [Music] secondary dominance are perhaps one of the more important concepts to grasp as a composer in order to develop more compelling chord progressions and in turn music in my opinion it should immediately follow the subject of diatonic functions and theory courses smart teachers will do this whilst others will only briefly mention it it's a large topic but i'd like to lay out in my opinion the basics of secondary dominance in a no-nonsense manner so to start off what is the secondary dominant simply put a secondary dominant is the dominant major or seventh chord that resolves to any chord of a piece that is not the tonic although this is the standard definition i find it misleading as i think there are actually two types of secondary dominance those that are related to the key signature of the piece and those that aren't i would map out related secondary dominance as such let's start with g major i didn't choose this key randomly it'll make sense later in g major we have seven unique scale degrees on which we can build triads all but one of these implies certain key signatures in and of themselves the odd degree out being the leading tone which forms an f-sharp diminished chord to be somewhat simple about it the leading tone degree is not really implying a key signature at all and is inherently weak which is why our ears always want it to resolve to the tonic by extension harmonically we can interpret this chord as just the upper three notes of the dominant seventh chord of d which is next to the dominant triad one of the most important harmonies that is used in g major besides the tonic so if we just omit the leading tone diminished triad we are left with six harmonies these being g major a minor b minor c major d major and e minor which have varying degrees of strength in relationship to the tonic the strongest of which are the dominant and subdominant of course where after the mediant and submediant have the next strongest relationship with the tonic the weakest relationship is between the supertonic and tonic this hierarchy is determined by the notes shared between the triads of the harmonies and the tonic the supertonic in this case is the only harmony among these six chords to not share a single note with the tonic this leads to a cadence built around the supertonic moving to the tonic or vice versa to sound weaker than the other possible cadences between the tonic and other degrees in tchaikovsky's guide to the practical study of harmony one of the first things he mentions is how chords that share notes with each other create the most fulfilling cadences and progressions now you don't always have to have cadences that share notes with each other but it's a good tip if you want your cadences to sound a little bit more fulfilling before i briefly mentioned that i consider there to be two different forms of secondary dominance these being related secondary dominance and unrelated secondary dominance so what do i consider to be related secondary dominance for me this is any chord that has a dominant characteristic that resolves to one of these six harmonies essentially you are borrowing the dominance from each of these chords as if you were suddenly in that key with the addition of these dominant chords in the context of a piece in g major you can maneuver to any of the six bass chords or degrees in a more satisfying fashion even the supertonic which i categorized earlier as having a weak relationship to the tonic can be reached more effectively by employing its secondary dominant as its dominant shares a note with the tonic and its dominant seventh even shares two notes with the tonic these related secondary dominants are almost like micro modulations but since it can be immediately reversed by continuing with other degrees associated with the home key it's not really a modulation in my opinion since these dominants all resolve to one of the degrees of g major they are in my opinion related which is why i use the term related dominance when explaining this to my own students oh by the way i give zoom composition lessons so check out the description to book one unrelated secondary dominance on the other hand are any dominant that resolves to a chord or a degree not in the key of the piece this could be something like an a flat dominant seventh chord resolving to a d-flat major triad and a piece written in c major however in this video i would like to place emphasis on what i call related secondary dominants or just related dominants as they have the strongest relationship to the keys in which they appear so besides just dominant sevenths and major chords having a dominant relationship other chords can achieve the same function but still fulfill the same function as a secondary dominant i'm referring to other chords like diminished or half diminished sevenths or dominant or dominant minor ninths which can resolve in a similar manner to dominance and dominant sevenths and thus can be effectively grafted into this scheme i'd wanna dwell on this as the practice of employing different seventh chords besides dominant sevenths and even ninth and eleventh chords to fulfill dominant functions in classical music is a topic worthy of an entire video in and of itself so i can't get too much into it in this video however just by adding these additional variant dominant chords you can already see how the usable palette of chords and just g major has been greatly expanded so why did i choose g major well there's a piece in g major that demonstrates secondary dominance in a very straightforward fashion this being bach's famous prelude from his cello suite in g major although this prelude is written for one singular voice it is fairly straightforward and forceful in its implied harmonies if we analyze the very first measure of this piece [Music] this is simply a broken g major chord with a as an auxiliary note most of this piece follows the mold of clear broken chords with auxiliary notes but the implied harmonies are quite clear the second measure presents the second version of a c major chord and so on i'm just mentioning this quickly so you understand how i'm determining the harmonies that correspond to the melodic line so let's get back to the topic at hand which is secondary dominance the first true secondary dominant appears in measure 6 where bach uses the a dominant 7th chord to lead into the d major of measure seven the melody continues in d major with the addition of a c sharp which is not an accidental within the g major key some might say this section represents a modulation to d major but i think it's better explained with secondary dominance as the section is only in my opinion borrowing the accidentals that are part of d major to strengthen the characteristics of the dominant harmony additionally this d major section is far too short to be a meaningful modulation in fact the practice of borrowing the accidentals from a harmony's actual key signature as opposed to the key in which the piece is written is fairly common in classical music and while some like to refer to even these momentary transitions as modulations i consider them to be brief sidesteps but still firmly within the parameters of the key of the piece this is up for debate but for me it's not enough to be modulation measure 11 presents either a g sharp diminished seventh chord or an e dominant minor ninth this depends if you want to view the e as an auxiliary note or actually part of the harmony whether it's a 9th or a 7th the result remains the same which is that it leads us to a minor in measure 12. measure 13 implies a b dominant 7th which resolves to e minor in measure 14. measure 16 then presents us with a g dominant 7th chord which resolves to c major in measure 17. [Music] measure 20 implies an a dominant seventh chord but instead of resolving to d major bach resolves to a d dominant seventh thus lengthening the tension of the phrase for several measures bach plays around with d dominant seventh and d continuously faking out the listener that a resolution is coming but bach doesn't give us that simple satisfaction briefly in measure 24 a d dominant minor 9th is implied with auxiliary notes stringing out the dominant characteristic even further g major although briefly presented and measure 26 gives way to an implied a dominant minor 9th which ultimately resolves to the d major harmony only to revert back to d dominant 7th which more or less continues till measure 39 where g major is finally and triumphantly reintroduced thus bringing this musical journey to a satisfying conclusion the reason i chose this piece is that besides illustrating secondary dominance it also demonstrates the other chords that fulfill similar harmonic characteristics to dominant chords which is why i also consider them within the musical realm of secondary dominance or as i like to call them related dominance it also only uses those dominants that resolve to one of g major scale degrees so that's as brief an example i could give on secondary dominance and i hope to have helped you understand just another one of the very important principles in classical music [Music] you

Channel: Musica Universalis

Views: 9,273

Keywords: Bach Prelude Cello, Secondary Dominants, Doppeldominant, Dominant, Secondary Dominant, How Bach composes, Music Theory, Video Essay, Classical Music, Musiktheorie, music theory, how to use secondary dominants, what are secondary dominant chords

Id: FzXhh9G7GWw

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021