So, basically, I'm studying for a Theory Placement Exam that I will be taking next week and I have the textbook and workbook for the highest numbered class of which I can test out (Music Theory III). I'm looking over the material, and some of it I know and some I have been able to learn in the past week (Neapolitan Sixths, Borrowed Chords, Secondary Leading Tone Chords, Large-Scaled Forms, etc.), however, there are some things on which I still have questions:

1) How is one supposed to tell the difference between a bunch of borrowed chords and modulating to the parallel key? I forgot where I read it, but I read that borrowed chords are more widely used in the Romantic Era than earlier times (Schubert's all over the borrowed chord section).

2) I've been through almost all of the III material - it seems to be more like a logic course more than anything. It's like saying, "You have this chord. Some of the notes aren't diatonic. Is it a secondary dominant? secondary leading tone chord? borrowed chord? the start of a common tone modulation? a Neapolitan? an augmented sixth chord?" along with dozens of other possibilities. Do I have the wrong impression? :heh: I just came out of a AP Music Theory course and I'm shocked by the depth of the analyses in the workbook (but something makes me think I'll get used to them with time).

Thanks for any help.

Borrowed chord are more commonly Romantic if you're talking about modal borrowing (such as borrowing the iv from minor to replace the IV in major). Usually, that would only be for one or two chords. Modulations, on the other hand, generally must involve a cadence in a new key area.

That's true that much of Theory III is preparing you for formal analysis in that it's teaching you how to recognize how a chord functions in context rather than just as an entity in and of itself.

Thanks, deathraider. I have another question: in one of the workbook problems, I'm stuck on a problem. Let's say you're in a major key and you get a V(7) chord. You would think this chord would either proceed to either I or some inversion of I or, if deceptive, vi. There's a piece by Schumann in which the V(7) chord goes to the dominant 7th chord of the relative minor, and, moving on from there, it seems to be a legitimate modulation to the minor key with V(7) chords of the minor key right after these two chords. Would I consider this sequence a common-chord modulation with the V(7) in the major in the minor key a VII(7)? Thanks again.

It would be more helpful if you showed me the excerpt. However, from how you describe it it sounds like that would be right. It's hard to say without seeing how it functions within the sequence.

Best I could do considering that I don't have a scanner.

http://i38.tinypic.com/15av44.jpg

OK, your pic didn't help me with the analysis, so I used the lyrics to find which Schumann piece it was. That is a really interesting chord progression, and honestly I'm not the master of analyzing romantic music. However, from what I can see it seems like it doesn't really "modulate" to the relative minor, per se, because there's not really a cadence in that key. It does, however, modulate to the dominant by measure 9 (which I feel is the first cadence in the piece). In this case, we would probably consider what happens in measures 5-7 a temporary tonicization of c minor in order to strengthen the pull towards the cadence in the new key, so that the cadence basically goes ii-V-I in B Major, with an augmented sixth thingy inserted for good measure at the beginning of measure 8.

Thanks for all of your help! So would I consider the V(6 5) (in the image) a V(6 5)/vi, as with the V(4 2) a V(4 2)/vi?

EDIT: Wow, on a side note, I'm looking back at what I've done in this workbook and how many times I've wrongfully treated secondary dominants and mode mixtures as modulations... o_o

Yes.

Thanks for all of your help! So would I consider the V(6 5) (in the image) a V(6 5)/vi, as with the V(4 2) a V(4 2)/vi?

EDIT: Wow, on a side note, I'm looking back at what I've done in this workbook and how many times I've wrongfully treated secondary dominants and mode mixtures as modulations... o_o

You could also consider a situation like that an "area of" a certain key when it doesn't fully modulate by cadence. I forget how to notate it though since I haven't taken more analytical theory in about 2 years @_@