Chopin Barry Harris analysis

[joe2758]

Just read this in the book

lol

[Ingo Lee]

Thanks @Joe2758 for the Chopin info; very interesting.

On improvising; years ago I read a Beethoven anecdote that had him playing a solo recital in a small hall on a busy street. During one piece a marching band came down the street in full cry. Rather than submit to the louder group Beethoven quickly modulated to the key of the band piece and even added counterpoint to the band melodies. When the band had passed he modulated back to his own piece and completed it, much to the amusement of the audience.

Charlie Parker could have done this.

[joe2758]

awesome anecdote!

[joe2758]

Prelude in c major. All very straight forward. lots of 6th chords. I circled three chords here that enforce my hypothesis that all my work on BH stuff is putting me in the right direction for my goals (simple classical guitar similar to Fernando Sor's etudes but with the romantic style harmony of Chopin, ironically mostly informed by Barry Harris)



1. The circled F6 chord uses the b6 as its non-harmonic note, essentially DEFINING the F major 6th diminished.
2.Another example of the biii dim
3. Same as #1 but on C.

So here it is interesting for F chord he uses F6 diminished, and I would be very interested to see if he would use a Bb as a non-harmonic tone here.

[GuyBoden]

Prelude in c major. All very straight forward. lots of 6th chords. I circled three chords here that enforce my hypothesis that all my work on BH stuff is putting me in the right direction for my goals (simple classical guitar similar to Fernando Sor's etudes but with the romantic style harmony of Chopin, ironically mostly informed by Barry Harris)



1. The circled F6 chord uses the b6 as its non-harmonic note, essentially DEFINING the F major 6th diminished.
2.Another example of the biii dim
3. Same as #1 but on C.

So here it is interesting for F chord he uses F6 diminished, and I would be very interested to see if he would use a Bb as a non-harmonic tone here.

I once asked a classically trained Organist I knew about the chords of a song. He replied "guitarists seem to be obsessed with chords, when really it's about the notes".

He practiced the Organ at Liverpool Cathedral.

[Tal_175]

There are also a lot of similarity between Barry Harris's harmonic concepts and the concepts used to analyze Bartok's music, known as the axis theory.

[johnhall]

I did an analysis of Jobim's "How Insensitive" which was based on this Chopin Prelude. It's all about the voice-leading.
I hope you find it interesting: Jobim's How Insensitive - A Study in Voice-Leading
Downloadable PDF at end.

John

[joe2758]

Cool, John! Thanks for sharing

[joe2758]

Everything easily explained. I circled two parts

1. Literally the bm 6th diminished
2. use of tritone sub followed by its diminished chord

[joe2758]

I always think of Brahms but Barry didn’t mention him at the classes I went to.

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I haven't listened to much Brahms, so I am checking out his solo piano works now based on this comment. Definitely sounds like the same approach would work for analysis.

[joe2758]

I googled a little about other approaches that have been used to analyze Chopin, and I keep seeing terms like "unresolved" and "non-functional" and "extremely complex." I understand how it could be seen that way during Chopin's time, but in hindsight it all seems so easily explained and completely logical. There probably weren't terms for what he was doing, but there are now. The analyses I have seen seem to be a pre-chopin mindset trying to make sense of his harmony.

Here's an example from the biography:

"Chopin's widely acclaimed harmonic innovations...from his daily contact with the keyboard, where is fingers easily led his ears into uncharted territory."

Then he gives an example of descending chromatic dom7th chords. Fingers leading the ears? Maybe on guitar, but not on piano; that's hard!

More on the passage, "chains of 'chords of the seventh' resolving only onto themselves, and they never find a proper tonal resolution until the pattern is abandoned."

By my analysis, key of C#min

1. G# to C#min establishing the key
2. F#7, F7, E7, Eb7, D7, Db7, C7, B7

This is where the excerpt ends. I looked at the rest of the piece and immediately following is F#-6 to C#min.

This is very straight forward through BH lens, and perfectly well resolved.

[Christian Miller]

The Music Professor has a good take on this

In so much as I understand it Chopin resists simple functional analysis because his music is a chromatic extension of a contrapuntal approach. The Prelude is a development of the chromatic bass that was popular from the baroque era coupled with unique chromatic suspensions. It’s very different to Bach or Purcell obviously but the underlying principles are the same.

Also improvisation as you noted. I don’t think there’s anyone who demonstrates that better than Michael.

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[Christian Miller]

This is a fun one btw

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[joe2758]

Okay I watched the Music Professor one. He may be over simplifying for his audience, but I don't buy that he is just lowering notes by semitones without full knowledge and mastery of what is happening vertically. I understand chromatic voice leading, and obviously I see it happening in the piece, but it seems to me these chromatic movements are woven THROUGH a progression.

Just out of curiosity, have you looked at any of the work I posted? I hope this doesn't come off rude! It's just you haven't commented on it at all.

[Christian Miller]

Okay I watched the Music Professor one. He may be over simplifying for his audience, but I don't buy that he is just lowering notes by semitones without full knowledge and mastery of what is happening vertically. I understand chromatic voice leading, and obviously I see it happening in the piece, but it seems to me these chromatic movements are woven THROUGH a progression.

Just out of curiosity, have you looked at any of the work I posted? I hope this doesn't come off rude! It's just you haven't commented on it at all.

Sorry I shouldn’t have commented without looking. Tbh I haven’t had time to look at it really.

But I promise to take a look at it. It looks quite clean and simple which is a good sign. And I am certain Barry did this too.

Re what the music prof is discussing - this strikes a chord (boom ching) with me. I would say that FWIW having gone through the partimento thing a bit it resonates with me. very often when working through chromatic bassline stuff I find myself not thinking about chords in the jazz chord symbol way at all. In fact I could realise a figured bass and have to think about the names of the chords after I’ve played it. As for traditional functional analysis - irrelevant to the process.

I think people are so used to analysing vertical chords moving to other vertical chords that they find it a bit weird not thinking along those terms, especially as Chopin’s music is not obviously contrapuntal like Bach is. But it is under the hood. in jazz we start with chords and move to voice leading. In this stuff you start with voice leading from a melody or bassline and look at the vertical aspect in terms of intervals

So I look at chordal analyses of classical stuff by jazzers and it seems kind of clunky. If I write chord symbols down for a lesson or something for this stuff it’s an extra step I have to take.

And when I do write symbols it can seem complicated or strange looking even when it sounds logical. Actually that’s true of a lot of the stuff I write these days.

It’s hard to explain, but you focus more on the movement, and the movement and resolution of individual dissonances. Which is actually the sort of thing Barry would say.

So I think you get to similar sort of place with the Barry Harris approach (or Mick Goodrick’s for that matter) that I see as highly related. Barry Harris said of a young student he heard who had studied the partimento approach that ‘everything she is playing is correct.’ So he clearly vibed off that approach and if I haven’t linked them up it’s because there is still so much for me to learn about the seven note diatonic world.

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[joe2758]

Even though I'm using the chord symbols, I think the idea is similar. Maybe I can give an idea how I use this stuff to compose/(sort of) improvise using just a C6 chord and 2 voices.

Here I start with my counterpoint


Then I add non-harmonic tones, "borrowed notes"


So, for a chromatic bass line, it would simply be a scale with passing tones.

For this whole passage my chord symbol would just be C6 or I

[joe2758]

Sorry I shouldn’t have commented without looking. Tbh I haven’t had time to look at it really.

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Not at all!

[Christian Miller]

Even though I'm using the chord symbols, I think the idea is similar. Maybe I can give an idea how I use this stuff to compose/(sort of) improvise using just a C6 chord and 2 voices.

Here I start with my counterpoint


Then I add non-harmonic tones, "borrowed notes"


So, for a chromatic bass line, it would simply be a scale with passing tones.

For this whole passage my chord symbol would just be C6 or I

Yeah looks good - making good use of 6ths and 10ths.

Figured bass realisation can start off with just intervals in two parts like this. It just tells you the interval above the bottom voice.

So if you get into this stuff there’s a whole bunch standard moves that you see the great composers base stuff on, without having to compose out species counterpoint (these guys didn’t have time to reinvent the wheel).

Species counterpoint is like knowing the way the chess pieces move, but real world counterpoint is like knowing all the openings.

So composition and improvisation is a lot like knowing how to artfully embellish the archetype

So guys like Chopin would apparently have been working on this stuff since early childhood. Here’s some typical takes on a chromatic bass for example. It gets deep lol, but he outlines the basic schema early on.

Mattei, Verset 3 in D Minor – Essays on Music

But then you start noticing these things in jazz standards…

It’s worth saying that while the E minor prelude is clearly related to these exercises it also not the same as the classic scheme. How insensitive fits better! One aspect is the melody circle around the 5 and b6 of the key before descending chromatically which is a very important aspect of the Chopin. This is incredibly common.

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[Christian Miller]

Btw in this (rather dense) article notice Demeyre mentions the ‘hermaphrodite note’ - b6. So this is the classical conception of the major 6-dim scale?


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[joe2758]

Here's another example from the bio:
"The mazurkas, in fact, contain a goldmine of advanced harmonic procedures that have been prospected to the point of exhaustion by theorists."



CERTAINLY advanced, but perfectly logical with this type of analysis. Measure by measure (cminor):
1. D/D#...D# comes from the related dim, with the Dmaj chord deriving from that. In this case, the tritone sub.

2. to Edim...biiidim
to F#dim...related dim

three chords pulling to C#

Surprise here, the F#dim is also the biii of C natural.

So this is used to pivot to C7

3. C7 goes to dmin

4. dmin side steps down to C#min6

C7b5...C#min6 is the "tritone's minor."

5. to fmin
to Gdim...related dim
bass lowers half step making F#7

6. to Abmin, the same family as the fmin and dmin.

to..Bbdim related dim

. the Bb is also the related dim of B because it is the same family so..

7. Bmin to c#dim

8. B7

9. cm6

[Christian Miller]

I mean just glancing quickly at that extract and without going deep so much of it is chromatic interpolation and lower neighbours between diatonic harmonies broken up into arpeggiated textures and so on.

So it looks like chromatic counterpoint to me.

Which is how Barry taught the biiio7 for example - it’s a chromatic interpolation between I6 and IV6

C E G A
C Eb Gb A
C D F A

But this is all in chromatic figured basses such as Mattei’s as well.

This all got imported into the Tin Pan Alley universe esp via the likes of Cole Porter. Things like the way a standards cadence will go from the 13th of the V to the root of I comes from music of that era - the so called “Chopin Sixth” in that case. In guitar music you’ll find it in Merz.

As Barry said the great composers were not II to V to I, in classical music or jazz repertoire.

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[joe2758]

"Species counterpoint is like knowing the way the chess pieces move, but real world counterpoint is like knowing all the openings."

I like this. Am I right to think you mean like a repertoire of standard moves?

[Christian Miller]

"Species counterpoint is like knowing the way the chess pieces move, but real world counterpoint is like knowing all the openings."

I like this. Am I right to think you mean like a repertoire of standard moves?

Yes! There’s actually books of this stuff from the eighteenth century on. The Italians called it ‘Moti del basso’ movements of the bass.

Young music apprentices would work through all the movements of the bass with artful variations of counterpoints to set against them - often at the instrument, until they were second nature.

One of them will be familiar right away - the cycle of fourths with seventh chords. But there’s many others. Quite a lot of them pop up in jazz. My Foolish Heart is what some theorists called a Monte (classic 5-6 formula on an ascending bass) for example, as are some versions of Rhythm Changes. Confirmation, Georgia on my Mind and There’ll never be another you are forms of the Romanesca.

But there’s some that are rarely used. The bass in ascending fifths for example is rarely used in jazz but is gorgeous (although the verse of Flashdance has a nice example lol.)

Check out this free resource to check out the most common moves https://derekremes.com/wp-content/up...um_english.pdf


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[Christian Miller]

What this boils down to me is the same thing when Ethan Iverson talks about jazz being about repertoire more than improvisation.

In fact I kind of think that improvisation (and by extension composition) is really only the artful and creative application of a repertoire.

I feel like it’s actually the art of variation which is the thing to really work on once the basics are acquired. I feel that’s some of what Barry was about.

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[joe2758]

Christian, would it be stylistic or not to play rhythms like this in romantic era music?

https://youtube.com/shorts/WBVL6Odly...eLxfH4claOikmx