"Romantic Harmony" example; Why does it work?
I was reading some of Ted Greene's work and came across this PDF
www.tedgreene.com/images/lessons/chords/RomanticHarmony.pdf
In it, he goes from a vi6 chord (this 6 doesn't mean first inversion, it means the chord with an added major sixth, in this case spelled tonic-major sixth-minor third-fifth) to a I chord. I.e. from a Cm6 chord (spelled C-A-Eb-G) to Eb (spelled Bb-Bb-Eb-G).
I can't understand how this makes sense in the context of tonal harmony. Any help?
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My guess is that he harmonized the 4th mode of Bb Major: the Eb lydian scale is a whole-tone tetrachord, a perfect fifth and a major tetrachord which gives us only two alterations Eb and Bb. In this case the vi chord would have a major 6th. Now i'm not sure vi6-I is a common modal cadence in Lydian (I would have thought II-I was) because the #IV degree (a half-diminished chord) is usually not used, nor is the raised fourth used as the fourth tone of a vi tetrad for that matter.
An alternative analysis is to treat the tonic in your specific instance as a passing second-inversion to IV. e.g.
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