J. Anthony Allen explains chromatic harmony and chords outside traditional diatonic analysis, using Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as an example. He covers the Neapolitan sixth chord, built on the lowered second scale degree, and augmented-sixth chords with their characteristic flat-6 to 5 motion that appears across classical to modern pop music.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Music Theory Part 15. I'm really excited that we've made it this far. So in this class, we're going to discover some new chords. Now, you might think it's impossible to know any new chords, but because you know the diatonic chord progression, you know chords, scales, keys, modes, you know how it all works. So how would it be possible to make a new chord that doesn't fit into something that you already understand? And you would be right. The difference is there's a handful of chords that we haven't talked about because they just don't have any good definition, but yet they get used a lot. So something like we're going to look at Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata, a piece that you've all heard. Right away, there's a chord that if you encountered it, it would be impossible to analyze. But it gets one of these weird chord names. All of these chords fall under something called chromatic harmony. It means we're starting to pull outside of the key. We're starting to do a little bit different stuff. And it's something that we're going to see composers do more and more throughout history, leading up into modern day pop music. So we're going to learn a whole bunch of new things in this course. Let's dive in and let's learn these great things. Really fulfilling stuff to learn. So it's going to be a lot of fun. So let's dive in. Sa. Sam, Some rules, some basic rules of the Neapolitan chord. The only real rule here is that if you're gonna call our Neapolitan six, the root is gonna be a bii, and it's gonna be a major chord, okay? It's gonna be a major chord built on the bii. One of the things that you'll have noticed that we've been doing quite a bit in this class is really kind of leaning on this motion of a flat six to five. Okay? So in this case, it's the root, you know, the root of a flat six leading down to a five. But also in the chord itself. The recipe is flat 6, sharp 4 1. Same thing we already know, except we don't have this flat three. We have a two. So in this section of the piece, we're in D minor, and this is actually our IV chord. Okay? So we're on a four chord for this whole bar. Now remember, there are going to be passing tones in here. This is not a chorale kind of thing. So we can call this note a passing note. Okay? So I've already told you that these augmented six chords are type of predominant chord, okay? So they're going to have a predominant function, so it leads to dominant. I've also told you earlier that we tend to see this six resolving down to five motion as part of them.
