A Modern Approach to Chopin's Augmented Modulations
Admittedly, my first brush with augmented chords initially reached the pinnacle of about three half-baked assumptions in regard to their use. You either used them to sound like a poor man’s Claude Debussy, to get your spook on (akin to a mysterious soundtrack cue from Disney’s golden age), or by slapping one in between a simple chord progression and call it Doo-wop. Curiously enough, none of these assumptions were based on actual solid evidence, but back then I could’ve sworn that these examples were riddled with augmented chords. Luckily, I later on learned to use the raised fifth in many more ways through the realm of altered dominant chords, and finally found the apex of augmented harmony in the beautifully dark and mystical augmented scale.
Its beauty aside, the augmented scale is quite peculiar and arguably of limited use in a more traditional tonal context. Although that could even be said for the augmented chord in and of itself. Burdened by its unusual contours, the augmented chord has a seemingly less important- and less commonly defined role in functional harmony as opposed to the equally idiosyncratic diminished chord. Like its diminished counterpart, the augmented chord is symmetric in nature (made up of major- as opposed to minor thirds), and shares a similar dominant function in tonal harmony. Even so, diminished chords have undeniably been predominating the history of tonal western music over its augmented equal –for reasons outside of the scope of this blog– and subsequently, have more coverage throughout all harmony textbooks derived from it.
Few and far between as augmented chords are, they can be found providing their magic in a lot of our favorite works if you look hard enough. Underlining their potential, they can be found in an intriguing harmonic sequence in the middle section (mm. 25–28) of Frederic Chopin’s Nouvelle Étude in Ab major.
mm. 25–28 of Frederic Chopin’s Nouvelle Étude in Ab major
Starting off from our tonic Ab major, we swiftly pivot away from its key center by use of an augmented chord on beat 2, leading into A major in mm. 26. From this new tonic, we continue by modulating up in half steps through the use of these pivotal augmented chords.
By reducing these 4 measures to simple block chords (considering the harmonic implications of Bronislaw Pozniak’s pedal markings in my Peters edition), we can start to see why these chromatic modulations work so well.
block chord reduction of mm. 25–28 of Frederic Chopin’s Nouvelle Étude in Ab major
Through augmenting the 5th of Ab major on beat 2, we create a pivot note that is shared with our new tonic on beat 3. Using this pivot note as a bridge between distantly related keys is usually referred to as a common-tone modulation. And although this type of modulation works perfectly fine by itself, there is another structure at work here that is surprisingly more rooted in tradition than it musically suggests.
As we know, augmented triads are made up of two major thirds and therefore symmetrical in nature. With this symmetry –like diminished chords– comes an ambiguity of the root, meaning that there’s no way of telling if you’re dealing with a C-, E-, or Ab augmented chord by itself, since they all share the same notes. Consider this with the fact that augmented chords have a dominant function, and its getting clear why the augmented chord symbols in our block chord reduction are spelled differently than the left hand indicates. Functionally speaking, we’re looking at little more than a chromatic string of dominant to tonic cadences.
By revoicing the exact same sequence into a more modern harmonic realm as illustrated below, we get a first taste of its sonic potential. Note how the augmented chords make use of an extended note (P5) taken from the augmented scale.
mm. 25–28 revoiced with extended harmonies.
By just reinterpreting our first augmented chord as an Ab+ instead of E+ (remember, they share the exact same notes), we can modulate to Db- instead of A major if we honor its dominant function. As illustrated down below, there is great harmonic potential if we repeat this cycle, completely straying from our original sequence.
mm. 25–28 reharmonized as a circle of fifths progression
A testament to its sonic capabilities, it’s easy to forget that our example above is built on a chord progression as simple as the circle of fifths by use of augmented harmony.
Finally, we can reinterpret our original E augmented chord as C+, leading us through a cycle of minor thirds through its dominant-tonic relationships. Note how this reharmonization in particular brings to mind the harmonic language of Clare Fischer.
mm. 25–28 reharmonized as a cycle of thirds progression
Only if we utilize their symmetry and dominant tendencies as much as we do with their diminished counterparts, augmented chords hold a great deal of harmonic and modulative potential. Combined with the augmented scale and its enigmatic color tones, we can use them as beautiful dominant substitutions –bypassing that typical sound of the dominant tritone– or to swiftly modulate to distantly related keys.