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Ricardo -> RE: If falsetas are supposed to carry the cante melody (Nov. 20 2025 12:05:14)
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quote:
Why raised leading tone? It's true for natural minor scales. But not true for major scales since they have a natural leading tone e.g. B in C major scale.
Right, the major scale and the melodic minor scales both use the natural 6th, so that 7th chord construct has a normal minor 7th (half diminished 7 it is called, or minor 7b5 in jazz/pop). The flat 6 of the natural minor scale produces the "diminished 7th" relative to the raised leading tone (when G becomes G#, the F moves from a minor 7th relation to a diminished 7th). It is also true that the Phrygian scale has a flat 6. When raising the D to a D# as a leading tone, the D# to C relation also becomes a "diminished 7th". However the third, F, also becomes "diminished" and you get a chord called "diminished 3rd", D#-F-A and C would be its "diminished 7th". Hopefully you can see how that is the inversion of the FACD# or "German augmented 6th chord", you asked about earlier "why does it resolve to E and not Bb". For this reason, in the wiki page about those chords, it is explained that Tchaikovsky felt these chords were used in place of the secondary diminished 7th chords to resolve into the "key of the dominant". And as I have explained, these are proper functioning cadences of the "mi mode" or E mode, that we call Phrygian, which lost their identity as key centers over historical time.
Last thing to say about diminished 7th is that can also arise from synthetic scales that are atonal. For example the whole-half symmetric scale. So when I said "only" I was referring to tonal scenarios where spelling of notes matters. Synthetic scales and chromatics can use arbitrary spellings. ABCDEFG is required for tonal and modal spellings. "H" is a throw back to the older modal system where B and Bb were both allowed as "natural" or "normal" note options in the system, and some European music schools still use "H" and "B" for B and Bb.
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In the renaissance, they would call Bdim7-Cmaj7 Sopran cadence. Right?
Yes, in principle if they even used those terms verbally. I think the guys that made that Renaissance Cadences video are using them in a universal manner as a way to keep everything straight. The idea simply that the bass moves by step upward means it took on the traditional role of the discant or counter voice normally above the tenor in the soprano voice part.
To be clear, I have not yet encountered a proper diminished SEVENTH harmony back then, only the triads with a voice possibly doubled. I have seen an equivalent of a French 6th in inversion (BD#A, with top voice on held F), and this thanks to the musica ficta in the tablature (D was sharp and some historians believe that if a singer heard that they would rectify a sung F to an F# or tell the vihuela dude to change the D# back to D natural. I disagree with this and we can't ever know for sure).
quote:
I believe these 4 dim7 chords don't have to resolve to a tonic and its relative minor/major chord e.g. Cmaj7 and Am7.
As a subsitute for dominant/ secondary dominant, they can be used for modulating to different keys than C and Am?
Right, one can avoid the standard resolutions and these are called "evaded cadences" in the Renaissance video, and I know them as "deceptive cadences". Moving a G#o7 to a C major triad for example, the A note never arrived and G natural is not a proper resolution unless you heard G# as Ab...in which case, as I said earlier, you have interpreted the whole situation as "Bo7 in inversion resolved to C major, in HINDSIGHT, it was borrowed from C minor".
In off topic, there is the Barry Harris thing where he is doing exactly the above, however, it is almost silly because he insists on adding the 6th to his major harmonies (Bo7 resolve to C6), which is the inversion of the basic G#o7-Am7. As I said earlier, jazzers enjoy these enharmonic misspellings as they open doors to exotic sounds. But make no mistake they should be considered "Misspellings" at the end of the day.
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