Winter day. Music time. Stretch your boundaries with this new opera debuted at the Ojai Music Festival this past summer. A character called Dominant, an embodiment of the dominant chord in tonal harmony, complains to a bartender about her fate. “If only I could resolve,” Dominant sings mournfully, adding, “I yearn and sigh,” but “some part of me feels incomplete.” Then a character called Tonic, representing, you guessed it, the tonic chord, comes bounding into the bar, a cocky bass-baritone. Dominant looks at Tonic and says, “Oh no! Not you again!” “He follows me everywhere,” Dominant explains to the bartender. Of course, this is exactly what occurs in tonal music, especially the music of the Classical era. The tonic chord does follow the dominant everywhere, like a stalker. And the dominant can only attain its longed-for resolution through its interaction with the tonic.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 15:12:02 +0000
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