The GENIUS harmonies of Mozart's Requiem Lacrimosa: A harmonic analysis #mozart #lacrimosa #requiem

[Music] so [Applause] hello everyone welcome back dom here and on this video we're going to talk about mozart's lacrimosa from requiem an amazing piece of music maybe one of my favorite pieces ever and what i'm gonna do on this video is i'm going to show you how mozart took a relatively simple ascending scale and turn it into something that's spine chilling it has a massive build up and he did all this using his genius harmonies right after this [Music] [Music] so in order for you guys to be able to listen to the actual piece and for me not to have to worry about copyrights and everything adding an arrangement for the lacrimosa up to the point where mozart wrote that's where his scripts end so let's have a listen first and then we'll dive into what he did with the amazing harmonies [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it's brilliant it's like literally it always gives me the goosebumps like literally guys and uh you know it's mozart you know we all know he is he was a genius uh you know need me to tell you that that was mozart by the way if you want me to show you how i did all this arrangement because this was all done by hand i'd never even edited the midi and what libraries i used and all these things hit the like button subscribe to the channel and share this video because i want more people to see stuff like this this is what i really really like guys this is what i'm excited about so the piece is written in 12 8 it's a slow piece i've heard many renditions from many orchestras some maestros like to go very slow like super slow some people played faster you know it depends on how you like it i like it like medium temp i don't like it very fast but i don't like it very very slow like some orchestras play it the part that i'm interested in is where the choirs sing in unison and the soprano does this ascending scale [Music] now this sounds really really plain and simple really boring somebody might say but let's find out how mozart orchestrated this how he used harmony to build tension first of all he already uses the melody to build tension so how does he do that he starts like this okay up to this point we are in d minor okay that's the key i couldn't be simpler than that you can go so he starts with a d minor [Music] now this note b natural is not in the key of d minor you know it would be you know b flat so already we're going somewhere else he surprises us [Music] and then he surprises us even more because she goes like flat which is again not in the key of d minor but then check out what he does which builds attention even more so he does a chromatic scale like he goes semitone by semitone until he goes to the top note which is an a and he uses like a super wide range for the sopranos okay so he starts from really low [Music] all the way up to a where they can really scream right there really really masterful this one you can tell that this was not by you know accident you know the guy was a genius [Music] now the other thing that he does is of course he plays with dynamics so he goes it's almost like a breath you know everyone [Music] and then like longer [Music] so you can already feel the tension just by playing this symbol ascending scale okay that starts with a d minor and then goes chromatically so he builds attention even from the melody i love it i love it and then he also uses the harmony and that's the most beautiful thing ever okay so let's see what he did so he starts again he stays home the entire choir plays d minor and then a major which is the fifth okay the dominant and then he goes back to d d minor and then now he uses this c major there as a dominant for the third the third of d minor is f major so he goes d minor a major d minor c major which is the fifth of the f major okay and then now this b natural that i talked about earlier is also a surprise chord and what is it it's an e major [Music] which acts like a dominant for a minor where he's going next so he uses a lot of tonicization this is basically having the dominant chord of the chord that is going to follow and it kind of makes the next chord sound like the root almost at least diatonic harmony so we reached at a minor and then what does he do he goes g major and this is you guessed it it's the fifth of c major maybe you know but no what mocha does there is he goes to c minor he goes to a more remote kind of chord and that's where we start having the kind of chromatic ascending notes there [Music] and then what does he do he has like a c major seventh to lead to f again [Music] and now we get to some really interesting chords because then he goes chromatically again to f sharp so what could he do there could you go [Music] [Applause] yeah it would be mozart if it was this so she goes so what does he do there he uses the german augmented sixth chord which is a flat c e flat and f sharp now this was a very very typical thing for mozart it's all over the place and for the period actually but he uses this core to build even more tension okay this chord gives you incredible tension i use this chord for many things even for pop music sometimes [Applause] it has a very kind of classical connotation but i love it you know how can you not love this sound so these augmented six chords most of the times they lead to the fifth okay to the dominant so what happens is you have this and all the notes have a lot of tension they want to be resolved let me show you how this needs to be resolved to g [Music] this needs to be resolved to b this e flat needs to be resolved to d and f sharp it's it's the leading tone you know it needs to be resolved to g so [Music] [Applause] so that's how it works and then [Applause] you go to the root now he has taken us to a place where we are so far from d minor [Applause] and the place that she could go would be like c minor or c major but because it's mozart he only has two more notes to get back to d minor and he does it he does it in just two notes genius genius let me show you how so he goes augmented sixth so this is a flat you could say that this is like in normal pop chord uh you know terms you would say it's an a flat major with a seven and then he goes to g g major and then he has like i said two more notes let's see how he resolved this because he goes like what can you do with two notes if you're mozart you know what to do with two notes what does he do he adds another augmented sixth chord [Music] incredible let me explain what he did there so what he does is he uses the augmented sixth for the d minor before we we're in c minor but what he does now is he goes [Applause] and then when he hits the a the highest note [Music] he gives us a d minor 6 4 or like second inversion okay [Music] and then the fifth and he ends like this let's analyze this augmented 6 chord it's b flat and again this needs to be resolved here to a [Music] [Applause] he could do that but instead he does he leads this to a [Applause] and then a major and it's like majestic bombastic you know so let's say you want to find the augmented sixth a very easy way to find the augmented sixth of a key you know if you want to have like a cheat way is if you are in a minor for example you can actually go up one sixth and then build a major 7th chord and that's the german [Music] augmented 6 right so f with e flat which actually should be written d sharp okay because it wants to lead to e if it was flat it would lead to the note below that then they all want to be resolved like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] and this will give you a lot of tension with your compositions it has a kind of grandiose kind of tone let's play it once and let's observe the chords again and let's appreciate the magic of mozart [Music] so goosebumps guys this is mozart and as you can see the thing that i appreciate about classical music is all these amazing maestros back then you know all these incredible composers they had an orchestra they had no technical means they had zero like you know plugins or anything like that they could build tension just by using the right notes and maybe dynamics you know and the orchestra of course the orchestration the arrangement also plays a big part of it but as you can see i'm just playing the choir part here and it sounds so immense and so intense and the build up in my opinion is much better than any build up you can have on an edm track you know you know these are all amazing i love them you know that i do videos like this all the time and i love creating sounds like this and i love any type of music okay i'm not a music snob by any means but this is really incredible this is something that you don't need to have any technical skills to achieve you just need to work on your craft and you know appreciate what music is at its very core so i wanted to share this with you guys i've actually analyzed mozart's lacrimosa this specific part with many many friends of mine many top level musicians jazz musicians and it's so fascinating it's a such a great topic for conversation so i hope you like this video i hope you enjoyed it i hope i didn't go too deep i hope that it still accessible to people that don't have a lot of experience with music theory and music harmony but even if you don't i hope that inspires you to learn about music theory and music harmony because it's not just books and rules and you know boring stuff it's actually beautiful stuff like this as well and if by any chance you enjoyed this video and you found it useful or entertaining please subscribe to the channel consider this i'm gonna play chord while you do this maybe heal that bell notification icon as well maybe the like button too [Music] share the video maybe [Music] thank you so much guys i'll see you the next one [Music] you

Channel: Dom Sigalas

Views: 45,649

Keywords: mozart requiem, mozart requiem harmonic analysis, mozart harmonic analysis, lacrimosa harmonic analysis, requiem lacrimosa harmonic analysis, dom sigalas, requiem mass in d minor, mozart lacrimosa, requiem mass in d minor k 626, harmonic analysis, cubase, cubase tutorial, cubase 11, cubase chords, cubase 11 pro, steinberg iconica, mozart lacrimosa piano tutorial

Id: TL_llrc8nIM

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021