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by the English name for their function: tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, subtonic or leading note (leading tone in the United States), and tonic again. These names are derived from a scheme where the tonic note is the 'centre'.
The concept of harmonic function originates in theories about just intonation.It was realized that three perfect major triads, distant from each other by a perfect fifth, produced the seven degrees of the major scale in one of the possible forms of just intonation: for instance, the triads F–A–C, C–E–G and G–B–D (subdominant, tonic, and dominant respectively) produce the seven ...
Scales are named after their tonics: for instance, the tonic of the C major scale is the note C. The triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord in these styles of music. In Roman numeral analysis, the tonic chord is typically symbolized by the Roman numeral "I" if it is major and by "i" if it is minor.
[3] For example, the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 7, K. 309, modulates only to closely related keys (the dominant, supertonic, and submediant). [4] Given a major key tonic (I), the related keys are: ii (supertonic, [5] the relative minor of the subdominant) iii (mediant, [5] the relative minor of the dominant)
Put another way, it is the key whose tonic is the dominant scale degree in the main key. [8] If, for example, a piece is written in the key of C major, then the tonic key is C major and the dominant key is G major since G is the dominant note in C major. [9] "Essentially, there are two harmonic directions: toward I and toward V.
The term mediant appeared in English in 1753 to refer to the note "midway between the tonic and the dominant". [10] The term submediant must have appeared soon after to similarly denote the note midway between the tonic and the subdominant. [11] The German word Untermediante is found in 1771. [12]
The supertonic may be raised as part of the common-tone diminished seventh chord, ♯ ii o 7 (in C: D ♯ –F ♯ –A–C). One variant of the supertonic seventh chord is the supertonic diminished seventh [3] with the raised supertonic, which equals the lowered third through enharmonic equivalence (in C: D ♯ =E ♭).
The minor tonic, subdominant, dominant, and their parallels, created by lowering the fifth (German)/root (US) a whole tone. The parallel chord (but not the counter parallel chord) of a major chord will always be the minor chord whose root is a minor third down from the major chord's root, inversely the parallel chord of a minor chord will be ...