Quarter-Tone Dissertation

Example 4.7

Charles Ives, Three Quarter-Tone Pieces, Mvt. III, Chorale, mm. 13-15

In this example, Ives references a typical common-practice harmonic progression. (We can read the C-sharp in the bass as a D-flat.) All of the chords in this excerpt are A-chords except for the one that behaves as a surrogate dominant, which is a B-chord. We can hear this chord as an altered dominant because the G in the bass is the dominant of C, and the root of the chord, B-quarter-sharp, sounds like a close leading tone to the tonic.

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