On Sun Oct 2, at SundayOct 2 2:48 PM, Steve Parker wrote: > > On 2 Oct 2011, at 18:22, Christopher Smith wrote: > >> Yes, you are correct, except the Bb7 chord here replaces E7 going to A (or >> to D/A, the cadential 6/4 that is really an A chord with two suspensions. I >> imagine the next chord is D7/A, rather than D7 root position?). > > For the French 6th actually calling it E7(b5)/Bb holds a lot more musical > information. > Obviously for the German 6th this is problematic leading to E7(b5b9)no root - > which is kludgy.... especially when Bb7 does the trick. > > Bb7/Ab here is just functioning as a tritone substitution and not an > augmented 6th which would have Bb as the root not Ab.
There IS historical classical precedent for aug6th chords in inversion, dating back to the 17th century. Modern usage becomes a lot more liberal, for sure, including keeping the parallel 5ths that result from a Ger6-V7 movement. In jazz, tritone subs ARE modern augmented 6th chords. There is already some question as to what IS the actual root of an augmented 6th chord, and both modern and historical theorists are in disagreement about what their origins are, but for sure there are chromatic notes that resolve by 1/2 step. But then, this brings up one of my pet criticisms of classical analysis in general, which is the refusal to "read between the lines" to analyse what isn't actually there, but is only implied. However, I still maintain that for any usual aug6 chord, the implied chord scale would be mixo-#4, counting from the key's b6. I would certainly be willing to entertain alternates, which may or may not stay closer to the key (depending on whether the context is a major key or a minor key, the implied scale 3rd might be major or minor, involving in Robert's case F nat versus F#). For example, if you were to look at the second chord of Take The A Train (in the key of C, a D7 with an E-G# melody) you could describe it as a Fr6 but in inversion, and it could take many different chord scales including D mixo-#4 (same notes as Ab altered), Ab mixo-#4 (same notes as D altered, but the melody E doesn't support it), D or Ab whole-tone, or D 1/2-whole diminished (also unsupported by the melody E.) Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
