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Hoots : When does one omit the fifth in V7 chord in classical harmony? The textbooks on classical harmony that I have read (Leo Semlek, "Klassikalise harmoonia lühiõpik" ["A Short Textbook on Classical Harmony"] and "Klassikalise - freshhoot.com

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When does one omit the fifth in V7 chord in classical harmony?
The textbooks on classical harmony that I have read (Leo Semlek, "Klassikalise harmoonia lühiõpik" ["A Short Textbook on Classical Harmony"] and "Klassikalise harmoonia õpik" ["A Textbook on Classical Harmony"]) say that if V7 is in root position the fifth can be omitted (and the root is doubled).

There are some cases where he says that one should only use V7 without the fifth:

After II7
After IV

How does one decide when to omit the fifth? What is special about II7 and IV? In the case of II7, wouldn't it be a good idea to use the root of II7 as the fifth of V7?

I'm curious about the possible reasons because I am trying to write a computer program for generating nice classical chord progressions. It would be cleaner to have some kind of general rule ("omit the fifth if...") instead of adding several just-because special cases.

And are there any reasons why the textbook tells that the fifth can be omitted in V7 in root position but explicitly tells to not omit the fifth in the inversions of V7 or in any other seventh chord (II7 and VII7)? What is special about V7 in root position?


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The rule that the 5th can be omitted is developed of the voicing (voice leading) of the 4 parts:

ii7 = re,fa,la,do resolving:

re->so (bass root)

fa->fa (retain the common tone)

la->so (la->re could become a 5th parallel

do->ti (7th downwards)

similar problems with IV-V:

do->re (5th parallel with fa->so) ergo: do->ti

la->ti (ti would be doubling lead tone) ergo: la->so

if you keep the common tone and don't lead it downward there is no fifth in the V7 or you'll have strange leaps in the other parts (parallels of 5ths or the 7th of the succeeding chord won't be prepared or the 7th wouldn't be resolved correctly as lead tone.

The trouble with this rules is:

You should first write songs in this classical style and the you'll find the development of the rules by yourself. Other wise you have an amount of rules you should apply and don't know why. This means: Make first the mistakes and learn from your errors.

I suppose this program you want to write might already exist. Did you look it up yet?


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