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Thank you, currawong. If you ever get time for the long answer, I'm all ears.

drumour, isn't it F#b9, not F#9? F# A# C# E G. If that's what it is, then Debussy's spelling is perfect in the academic sense.

Now that I'm home playing my nameless chord, I see that it turns out to be the notes of the whole tone scale. Ho ho, and there I thought I had made up something with no pattern at all.

Someone else is sure to find a pattern in it, even if you don't.

First of all, as you have now discovered, you accidentally wrote a whole tone scale. It's not a difficult thing to space out all those notes so that they sound good, or interesting. If you play them all clumped together, it's going to sound like a tone cluster. If you space them so that the sound good, you will probably have something recognizable as PART of your chord.

You can take every note in the chormatic scale and space it out in one huge chord, rolled on piano, or block it for orchestra. Since there are an infinite number of ways to combine notes in such a manner, whether you choose to call it a chord or not is up to you. But if it bears no close resemblence to any chord that has a standard name, you either have to invent a name or leave it nameless.

In the end, naming is about grouping and logic, and it is a very practical thing.

The chords that Debussy is using here I would simply call sharp 9 chords. It is very easy to take the first few measures of what Debussy wrote, respell the chords but change nothing else, then use the D# chord as a form of V and end with some kind of G#m chord. The fact that he did not do that highlights how incredibly important it is to consider chords in context.

A C7 chord is always what it is. But it's not a V7 chord unless it goes to F or Fm. And if it is spelled with an A#, we have a clue about where it is going, but we don't know for sure until we look for a B chord going to E or Em. And if we see that, we can guess that it is not Bach because there will be a parallel 5th (C - G moving to B F#).

That's just a simple example.

I did not see this post until I answered. I used C7 in a similar example.

That'd be right.

The Lost Chord by Adelaide Anne Procter

Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I know not what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexèd meanings
Into one perfect[11] peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heav'n
I shall hear that grand Amen.

If I wrote F#7 anyone would know I meant F#A#C#E - not anything else. Similarly, in my musical upbringing, F#9 would expect a G natural forming a dim7 with the upper four notes - anything else would have to be further indicated. Sorry if it wasn't clear, though what I wrote a little later should have clarified it for you. These things are that arbitrary and context is all. I have to work a bit (not much I admit) to read lead-sheet type chord symbols as I wasn't brought up with that system.

John

Sorry, but I don't think you're right here. Whichever way you look at them (even where you think a spelling could be different and redefine the chord) the 7ths and 9ths in each chord are minor.


John

No notation is useless. I will upload notation, then we can talk...

What I had in mind: D#7, C#7, D#7 to G#m, with color tones...

I hear the F# in the C#7 chord as the #9, and the E natural in the C#7 chord as the #9. The voicing would be unusual.

In order to use standard #9 notation with all those sharps you would need to use E double sharp, for instance. In a Db chord it is easy to use E (#9) over the F, but it does not work well in sharps...

The interest, to me, is that you ALSO have b9 too, so E in the D# chord is b9, D in the C# is b9.

I hear it, I play it, I would use this voicing. But I have NO idea how to label it. Which brings us back to what Currawong said:

Not all chords have names, or need them.

I agree.

That would be incredibly non-standard. F#9 would mean to me, by default, F#7 plus the 9, and the 9 is G#. All numbers alone are major or perfect intervals, except for 7, which is minor by default and has be labeled maj7 for a M7.

Theses are the forms I have seen most often:

F#9 -- (add G# at the top)
F#7(b9) -- (add G natural at the top)
F#7(#9) -- (add either G double# or A at the top, choice is based on readability as well as theory)

I think I have more respect for the composer. What you appear to be doing is changing the notational spelling to suit your particular view of the harmony. One of the things we should recognise with great composers is that they were competent at their craft and that we should look at what they wrote, not what we would like them to have written. You seem to want the opening progression to be a kind of V v of V V I in g# minor and you've modified the key signature to support your thesis. You go on to justify your proposition by deciding that any notes that do not fit in with your theory are jazz-like added notes. (That aside, none of the chords you have written in the first 3 bars are #9 chords - in each the 7th and 9th are minor.)

"I hear the F# in the C#7[D#7?] chord as the #9, and the E natural in the C#7 chord as the #9. The voicing would be unusual. "

This is bizarre, really. If the first chord were D# something or other with the root omitted, then the 9th would be an E which in this case is natural making it, in your hypothesis, minor. Similarly, the 9th in a C# chord is a D. Regardless of what you tell yourself you're hearing, you really appear to be getting into quite a tangle.

I don't think it serves any purpose to try and understand the opening of this piece in terms of a tonal cadential progression - it is not a simple tonal progression with jazz-like dressing up of the chords. Also each of the chords as written by Debussy can be easily rearranged as a stack of thirds making minor 9th chords. Everything Debussy does in this opening is designed to subvert the dynamics of tonality and to weaken any sense of cadential, or any other, pull.

Where did you get your g# minor chord from in bar 4? Bars 4 and 5 do their utmost to not be a cadence - if anything the point of repose (not resolve) is on a minor. You're trying to force this music into a jacket it was never intended to fit.

John

Well, considering that:

1) I play this piece...
2) I love it...
3) I have played a great deal of Debussy's music, and Debussy is probably in a tie for my favorite piano composer...
4) His genius and openness to new things (in his time) has been something I have admired hugely my entire life...

I don't know how you figure you have more respect for Debussythan I do. That seems to me like some kind of bizarre p*ssing contest, and I don't know why in heavens this is going on...

No, I'm really not. I threw out an idea. Some of my ideas are really good, some of them are OK, and some are duds. If everyone else agrees that I am totally off-base, that none of what I have thrown is worthy of thought, even for a moment, then I'll just deal with that.

At least you took a look at what I presented and gave me feedback. Thank you for that, and there is no sarcasm in that at all. Silence is frustrating...

Gary

Let's see if I have my understanding straight:

I understand the 9 chord to be like a major 2nd chord which is a octave above the tonic in root position - it's sort of a diatonic name. So a major 2nd above F# is G#, therefore a 9 chord would be G#.

Then a flat 9 (b9) chord would be a half step below that, like a minor 2nd above the octave. That would give us G natural. So going by that, G is a b9.

Thank you for correcting that.

Yes, I meant D#7. And by the way, I realize very clearly that you could look at that chords as simply an F#7 chord with a G in the pinky of the LH chord. That is how I FEEL it, in my hands. The only point I wanted to make was that by putting G in the bottom of the chord, what would normally F#7(b9), with a G natural, is normally not voiced so that the b9 is on the BOTTOM.

I think it's simply that I was brought up in a system that was not affected in any way at all by lead sheets and jazz terminology. The standard C7 would be C E G Bb and the standard C9 would be C E G Bb Db. The context of this is a grammatical explanation of the diminished 7th as a substitution for, for instance, a secondary 7th chord. It has its own logic I suppose whereas your explanation expects something different from 7 and 9. Why would you expect unmodified 7 to always mean minor 7th and unmodified 9 to mean major 9th? That's not consistent. It's just different conventions.

John

Drumour, what I learned first was "classical" Roman Numeral type terminology, and again in formal written theory, designating chords as major, minor, augmented, and diminished. Then there were the inversions, so that if you saw CEA this was a first inversion minor chord and if it occurred in C major, then it was a vi6 - whereas in letter name terminology it could be a C6 depending on how you hear it. As I understand it, the advantage of letter name ("lead sheet") chords is that you write what you hear without needing a context or function. For example, Dm is a chord which is minor with a root D and has the notes DFA. If F is on the bottom you still write that you hear this D minor sound, by writing Dm/F. In conventional notation your Dm is ii in C major, or vi in F major, and if the key or function are ambiguous at this point you're in trouble. There is a different reason for writing ii and for writing Dm, and it serves different purposes. You're looking at the chords in different ways.

Going off on a tangent but with some reason: when the RCM revised their exam syllabus and the texts going with it, they expanded their "classical" arsenal. They now use Roman numerals (as before), plus figured bass, plus letter names, plus solfege names. Each reflects a different angle of music.

When I looked at letter names in chords, it seems that they were built as if the root of the chord was sitting in an imaginary major key, as if the naming was diatonic, but some of it involved quality. It seems that the names are mostly standard but not always. So first you have your major,minor, augmented, and diminished chords such as C, Cm, Caug, Co (floating o). But with the Cdim people also see that the 5th is smaller so it could be a Cm(b5). We're seeing G that normally occurs in a minor chord which normally is also part of a diatonic scale, and instead of being in its normal 5th above the root it has been flatted. It seems that individual letters that get designated separately are all see diatonically as they come from the root. So the 6 in C6 refers to the major 6th coming from the root. The 9 is like the 9 you have in classical, meaning it's like a M2 but an octave above, with the root position root of the chord being your reference point.

It seems to be a mishmash that's been cobbled together, sometimes looking at chord quality, sometimes at positions from the root - whatever it is that people feel in the their fingers and ears. The important thing here is that we all use the same terminology. What is important is that when we say we hear or see something, others will understand what we are referring to, rather than thinking we are referring to something else.

So for the group at large: C#E#G#BD , Do you see the D as a 9 or a b9? If you had C#EGBD, the first four notes would be a half diminished chord - would the D still be a b9 if you saw b9 for the first one?

About the idea of "disrespect" for the composer: What I'm understanding is that as musicians we get a subjective feel for what the music is doing and where it is going. Composers like Debussy are subtle, and Debussy liked to experiment and break new ground. He was going by an inner sound which he had to get on paper. We have these million theory rules that explain how music works, but which also put music into a box preventing us in part from getting at the music. In addition, composers did not always adhere to those rules when they had the music in their inner ears and being - they used them and bent them. The rules themselves are an attempt to describe what happens in existing music. I remember in conventional theory when learning about 4 part harmony of which Bach was a master, and we were told what Bach did but we should never break the rules that Bach broke. Obviously Bach had gone past the rules.

So what if you feel a "something" in the music? What if personally you feel it pulling in some direction? One way, in person, would be to play it as it was written, then play it where you logically expect it to go (but it doesn't), and say "See what I mean?" The other musician may say "No, what I hear underneath is this." and he plays what he hears.

See, the magic of great composers is that they tease us, making us think we're about to turn left, and suddenly we've gone up and around. To see the effects and try to express them is not disrespect but an invitation for similar exploration. When we are young we are playful with things, and the greatest learning happens that way. Later on we get taboos, and above all we get the notion of Correct Answers, Correct Names --- our composer is put in a box, and that box has a wall separating us from the composer. On one hand the conventions help us see things. On the other, they force us to pigeon-hole everything a composer does. So if some musicians relate to "where else the music might go but doesn't" to describe their experience, do we harumph in response, or do we see what additional things we may hear?

I've read some of the official write-ups about "what Debussy did". They leave me cold and don't seem to get to the heart of the matter. It reminds me of something I once heard, "I dissected a cat to get at its nature and ended up with a non-working cat." Sort of.

That is the pattern that I've seen commonly used. I surmised from what I saw the 9 is used a bit like figured bass, where you count from the root and think diatonically. The 7 would be the exception because the role of the minor 7 is such a strong one in music, that it has become the default.

The important thing is to find out what the most commonly convention is, so that there are no misunderstandings in this international community.