Sanagi
05-19-2007, 06:15 AM
So, I was reading Wikipedia's music theory articles, as I often do, and I came across this paragraph:
Functions in the minor mode
In the US the minor mode or scale is considered a variant of the major, while in German theory it is often considered, per Riemann, the inversion of the major. In the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries a large amount of symmetrical chords and relations were known as "dualistic" harmony. The root of a major chord is its bass note in first inversion or normal form at the bottom of a third and fifth, but, symmetrically, the root of a major chord is the US fifth of a first inversion minor chord, and the US root is the "fifth". The plus and degree symbols, + and o are used to denote that the lower tone of the fifth is the root, as in major, +d, or the higher, as in minor, od. Thus, if the major tonic parallel is the tonic, with the fifth raised a whole tone, then the minor tonic is the tonic with the US root/German fifth lowered a whole tone.
[full article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_functionality)]
Did you get all that? Try this: "The chords C Major (notes C-E-G) and A Minor(notes A-C-E) have shared notes, so one can smoothly be substituted for the other by putting a common note in the bass."
So often language fails utterly to explain music, which is all at once complicated, abstract, mathematical and subjective...
(Ask me sometime to explain what a five-six-five-of-five chord is!)
Functions in the minor mode
In the US the minor mode or scale is considered a variant of the major, while in German theory it is often considered, per Riemann, the inversion of the major. In the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries a large amount of symmetrical chords and relations were known as "dualistic" harmony. The root of a major chord is its bass note in first inversion or normal form at the bottom of a third and fifth, but, symmetrically, the root of a major chord is the US fifth of a first inversion minor chord, and the US root is the "fifth". The plus and degree symbols, + and o are used to denote that the lower tone of the fifth is the root, as in major, +d, or the higher, as in minor, od. Thus, if the major tonic parallel is the tonic, with the fifth raised a whole tone, then the minor tonic is the tonic with the US root/German fifth lowered a whole tone.
[full article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_functionality)]
Did you get all that? Try this: "The chords C Major (notes C-E-G) and A Minor(notes A-C-E) have shared notes, so one can smoothly be substituted for the other by putting a common note in the bass."
So often language fails utterly to explain music, which is all at once complicated, abstract, mathematical and subjective...
(Ask me sometime to explain what a five-six-five-of-five chord is!)