The Neapolitan 6th chord

Well, I didn't get home from tonight's choir 1 sectional until 11pm and I went to bed shortly afterwards, but I was woken by the earthquake about an hour ago and I haven't been able to get back to sleep, so I thought I'd do a quick blog update. (I did mean to do one last week to talk about the Neapolitan 6th, but it was quite a hectic week and I never quite found the energy.) (My TV appearance went fine, by the way, and they did promise they'd send a DVD of it at some point, so if they do I can lend it to people who missed the live show - I should warn you, though, that it's not very interesting!)

I'll get onto the chord in a minute. But first, in case anyone's missed them, there are all sorts of recent news stories about the Hallé's new assistant conductor. Read about her in BBC Music Magazine; Manchester Evening News; On an Overgrown Path; and in The Guardian. (And no doubt elsewhere too; I haven't been searching, those articles were all ones that I saw on my RSS feed.)

A few more links, while we're at it: a nice story about an audience member saving an opera (it's not quite as good as it sounds - he was already rehearsing the role in question - but still!) Also, New Scientist magazine has had some musical articles recently: try the one about auditory illusions or the one about animals being naturally musical (or not). And finally, here's a map of the world made out of musical notes. Pretty!

Thank you, by the way, to the many choir members who have expressed concern about my financial woes. Things are a little better now - I have cleared the electricity arrears and am in negotiations with the mortgage people (it's a much longer story than that but I won't bore you with it). There is light at the end of the tunnel. The temp wages that I've been on since September are only slightly above minimum wage, but that's quite a bit higher than the jobseeekers' allowance that I was on prior to that. I could live on my current wage, though - the problems have been caused by the arrears from when I still had to pay all the bills while only having £59 a week coming in for several months. But I've almost cleared all the arrears, thanks partly to extremely frugal living and partly to several very generous friends (you know who you are, and I *will* pay you back!) The place I'm currently working as a temp did offer to give me a permanent job, which would be a bit more money, but I'm holding out for something music-related, because that's one of the things I left teaching for. It's looking less and less likely, because there is now only one major Manchester musical organisation that *hasn't* rejected me, but you never know! I *have* achieved my main aims of being less stressed and having more free time to concentrate on my musical interests, so leaving teaching is a decision that I haven't regretted for a second. Money isn't everything.

Anyway, the Neapolitan 6th chord! I've been meaning to write about this for ages - I know I've mentioned it on the blog before. It's my very favourite chord (closely followed by "chord iii", but I'll explain that one another time). I've loved it ever since I first heard it (long before I found what it was called). I even attended a fascinating lecture about it at an Open University summer school several years ago. (The lecture covered the various types of augmented sixth chords (French, German and Italian sixths) as well, but the Neapolitan is better than all of them!) So what's prompted me to write about it now? Well, there's a very prominent one in the St Matthew Passion (I'd be very surprised if there weren't more than one, but I don't yet know the work well enough to point out another one), and during last week's rehearsal, we were working on that page (96) (the Neapolitan 6th is bar 134). I'd just pointed out to Alison that it was a Neapolitan 6th (I've been trying to enlist her in the N6 fan club for ages now), and at that moment, a certain person (who happened to be explaining the harmonic progression to us) said "what chord is this?" to which of course I replied that it was a Neapolitan 6th - and he disagreed with me and said that if anything it was a Neapolitan 2nd! (It turned out he was actually looking for a simpler answer, i.e. F major, but never mind!) Well, I can see why he might have thought that, but he was definitely wrong, and I like to think that he had a sleepless night that night, having realised that I was in fact correct :-)

So, what is a Neapolitan 6th? I'll try to explain as clearly as possible, because once you know what they are, you'll spot them throughout the repertoire. They're most common in baroque music, although they aren't restricted to that period - there are several in Gerontius, for example. Invariably they occur when the music is in a minor key. Now, in any key, you can have a chord based on any note of the scale. (I presume that most of you know that a normal chord on any given note consists of the note itself plus the notes a third and a fifth higher within the scale - so that the chord of C major would be C, E and G, but the chord of C minor would be C, E flat and G, because in C minor every E is an E flat. ... If you didn't already know this bit, I realise it's a bit confusing, but at the moment my target audience is people who *do* already understand how chords are usually formed, so if this is totally new to you, I'm sorry!)

Now, in the key of E minor, the scale goes: E, F sharp, G, A, B, C, D sharp, E. That's the harmonic minor scale (as opposed to the melodic minor), and if you've ever wondered why it's called that, it's because these are the notes used in the harmony - as follows: chord 1 (the tonic chord) is the chord of E minor (E, G, B). Chord 2 is actually a diminished chord (F sharp, A, C). Chord 3 is G major (G, B, D). Chord 4 (the subdominant) is A minor (A, C, E). Chord 5 (the dominant) is B major (B, D sharp, F sharp). Et cetera. (The "dominant seventh" chord - very common, and I'm sure you've all heard of it - would be B, D sharp, F sharp and A... why 7th? Because the A is a seventh above the B.) (If you're wondering why some notes are sharp and others are natural, go back and look at the E minor scale - that's why.) (If you're wondering why there's a D in chord 3 but a D sharp everywhere else, that's a good question - a simplified answer is that if chord 3 had a D sharp in it, it would be an augmented chord, which isn't often used in traditional harmony. Or, put another way... the harmony works better if chord 3 is a major chord. Not a very satisfying answer but it's as good as you're going to get for the moment!)

Now, before I explain what the Neapolitan 6th chord is, let me explain what it isn't. It isn't a chord based on the 6th note of the scale - it's called "6th" for a different reason. (It's called Neapolitan because it was popular with a Neapolitan group of composers.) So what is it? Well, to make a Neapolitan 6th chord, here's what you do: in a minor key, find the 2nd note of the scale (so in E minor that would be F sharp). Flatten it by a semitone (so it becomes F natural). Form a chord based on that note (in a minor key, this will always give a major chord - in this case, F major (F, A, C)). This chord is sometimes called the Neapolitan 2nd. However, it is hardly ever used in that form - invariably it appears as a first inversion chord, which means that although it does consist of F, A and C, it doesn't have the F at the bottom of the bass (which is called "root position"), it has the A instead. (If the C was at the bottom it would be a second inversion.) And it's the fact that it's used as a first inversion that gives it the name "6th" - the 6th is the interval between the A and the F.

Now have a look again at bar 134 on page 96. All the notes are either F, A or C, but the basses have A. That makes it a Neapolitan 6th. (Why is this chord usually used as a first inversion? Because the harmonic progression works better that way. I could explain why, but I've already gone on longer than I intended to, and I imagine some people's brains are hurting already.) So I'll finish by giving you two audio examples. The first is the page I was just describing. It's right at the end of the Soprano & Alto Duet with Chorus: "Behold, my Saviour now is taken" ("Loose Him!"). The excerpt starts on page 79, but the lightning and thunder bit starts at about 3:33 into the track, and the Neapolitan 6th bar is right near the end, at about 4:47. Listen to the last few bars until the sound of the Neapolitan 6th sticks in your head - it's very distinctive.

And finally, one of my favourite pop songs, and not just because it includes a Neapolitan 6th. It's REM's Everybody Hurts. This song is in a major key, but the middle section (starting at about 2:17) is in the relative minor, and the Neapolitan comes at about 2:40. (I think it's probably a 2nd rather than a 6th, because of what the bass does, but the sound of the chord is almost identical.) A great moment in the history of pop :-)