Foreign Chords

My pseudo-scientific survey turns up a German 6th chord, which is an augmented sixth:
"the common name for the Augmented sixth chord that has both a major 3rd and a doubly augmented 4th or perfect 5th in addition to an augmented 6th above the flattened submediant."

French:
"The common name for the Augmented sixth chord that has both a major 3rd and an augmented 4th in addition to an augmented 6th above the flattened submediant."

Italian:
"The common name for the Augmented sixth chord that has only a major 3rd in addition to an augmented 6th above the flattened submediant."

Neapolitan:
"The first inversion of the major triad built on the flattened second degree of the scale; in C major or minor, F–Ab–Db. It usually precedes a V–I cadence and it functions like a subdominant (in German chord analysis it can be described as the Leittonwechselklang of the minor subdominant)"

All quoted from the Grove Dictionary of Music, On-line
http://www.grovemusic.com

All are also named as sixth chords in the term, German 6th, Neapolitan 6th, etc.

Hope that helps.

Musenfeld's research is accurate... I just thought I'd elaborate a bit :)

There's a pretty fair discussion of the first three in Walter Piston's "Harmony" (Chapter 27, Augmented 6th Chords), and extensive discussion of the fourth in the same book (Chapter 26, The Neopolitan Sixth).

By the way, I own dozens of Harmony books... and Piston is the one I always refer to first.  If you're interested in traditionally harmony, it's well worth the price, which is around $50... but it's been in print continuously for over 40 years, so you should be able to get used copies for a whole lot less.

At any rate, here's the chords and resolutions he gives as primary examples... understand we're talking 4 part harmony here, so I'm not going to be able to illustrate these functions in TAB... unisons on guitar are only available using open strings, so they're not moveable.  The first set of notes is the sixth chord, the second is the resolution:

Italian
Soprano - F# up to G
Alto - C up to D
Tenor - C (unison with Alto) down to B
Bass - Ab down to G

It functions as a diminished V of V (the examples here are all in C major)

French
Soprano - F# up to G
Alto - D remains D
Tenor - C down to B
Bass - Ab down to G

Again, the function is a diminished V of V

German
Soprano - F# up to G
Alto -Eb down to D
Tenor - C down to B
Bass - Ab down to G

Again, diminished V of V

The Neopolitan sixth gets 13 pages of explanation in Piston's work, so it's hard to give just a single example of its use.  Here's the first one he gives:

Soprano - Db down to B
Alto - Ab down to G
Tenor - F down to D
Bass - F (doubles the tenor an octave below) up to G

The function is subdominant; although the Neopolitan sixth is essentially a major triad (rearrange the notes and you get Db-F-Ab), its used here in the key of C with Db as the root of the chord (roots don't have to be bass notes), and it wants to resolve to the dominant chord in the key, but it wants to do so in a downward motion... the three top voices here are all descending.

Oh, and Piston does note there's no good explanation for the naming of these chords by location, but other authors do state the Neopolitan sixth springs from common usage by composers from Naples.

Tom

Well......

This is all certainly very [glow=red,2,300]FOREIGN[/glow]alright......

But what does it mean in [glow=red,2,300]English?[/glow]

There's two excellent replies there Derp, and that's about as simple as it gets.

Alan :-)