31: Introduction to Non-Chord Tones

 

We’re now ready to start an examination of what happens when someone writes a harmony that includes notes that are not part of the chord(s) involved. These notes are called “non-chord” tones.

There are several types of non-chord tones (often just abbreviated to “NCT”s):

1.       Neighbor tones: starting from a chord-tone, moving up or down stepwise in accordance with the scale to an adjacent neighbor and back to the original chord tone

2.       Neighbor group: starting from a chord tone, moving up or down a step to a neighbor, then in the opposite direction by a third to visit the other neighbor, then back to the original chord tone

3.       Passing tones: starting from one chord tone, moving to another chord tone, moving stepwise through a non-chord tone

4.       Appoggiatura: a non-chord tone which is approached by a leap and resolved by an opposite-direction step to a chord-tone

5.       Escape tone: the opposite of an appoggiatura, a non-chord tone which is approached by step and resolved by an opposite-direction leap to a chord-tone

6.       Anticipation: the arrival of a chord tone in the next chord, before the arrival of the rest of the chord

7.       Suspension: a leftover note from the previous chord, which resolves into the current chord by moving down stepwise

8.       Retardation: a leftover note from the previous chord that resolves into the current chord by moving up stepwise

9.       Pedal point (may or may not be an NCT): when one tone, usually in the bass, is held constant as harmonies around it change

 

Let’s look at some examples:

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Here, on the left side of the double-bar, we have two F major chords that are totally diatonic: just F, A, and C in some combination, in both chords. On the right side, meanwhile, the F in the tenor in the first chord now only occupies half the bar, sharing the other half of the bar with a G, which obviously does not belong in an F major triad. The G is approached via an F, and goes into a G, so we have stepwise motion all in the same direction from a chord tone to a chord tone via a non-chord tone. This is a passing tone.

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Here, we have two purely F chords on the left, and on the right, the same example now altered by the addition of a single neighbor. D is not a member of the F major triad, but it is an upper neighbor of C. From the first C, we step up to the D, and from there down to the second C. This, therefore, is an upper neighbor tone; using a B-flat in place of the D, however, would have been a perfectly fine example of using a lower-neighbor.

Relatedly, now in this example, we have both an upper and a lower neighbor, moving between themselves, having come into the non-chord tones from a chord tone, and exiting into a chord tone. Since we have both upper and lower neighbors, this is a neighbor group:

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Here, in this little fragment from the beginning of the Gavotte from Bach’s D major Orchestral Suite BWV 1068, we have 2 examples of appogiaturas: F# is not a member of G major, and yet we approach by leap and resolve by step, and likewise about the E which is not a member of D major.
A black and blue sheet music AI-generated content may be incorrect.
In this next example. We have an escape tone: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave”.
A black and white sheet music AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Notice that “home” is harmonized with a B-flat chord for 2 beats, but “home” itself is only 1.5; the other 0.5, meanwhile, is in “of”, and then for the last beat of the bar (“the”), we switch harmonies. The Eb on “of” is not a part of the B-flat chord, and we approach it stepwise from the D and leap downward (i.e., in the opposite direction of stepping up from D to Eb) from Eb to C, where “the” is once again diatonic.

 In the following example, there are four anticipations: the second half of the first beat of bar 1, beat 4 of bar 1, beat 4 of bar 2, and the “a” (as in “4 e and a”—that is, last sixteenth note) of bar 3. In each case, the notes in the melody at those points belong to the next chord, not the one being played at the time, so the chord, in a sense “arrives early”:

A sheet music with notes AI-generated content may be incorrect.

In the following example, in the first full bar, we see an example of a suspension. (Suspensions are so common and important that they will get their own article, probably right after this one.) In the pickup, we have a straight-up Ab chord. In the lower voices in the first full bar, we seem to indicate a preference for Eb major—yet the Ab remains for the first half of the bar (Ab is not in the Eb major triad), before the Ab falls to a G, transforming the non-chord-tone Ab into the chord tone G. (The third bar is there just to complete the cadence, not because it has anything to do with the suspension.)

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In this example, we have a retardation, which is like a suspension, except the resolution (still in the first full bar) moves up, not downward, to resolve into a chord tone from an NCT.
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For our final NCT example, I pulled from the beginning of the first movement (the prelude) of the first suite Bach wrote for solo cello. There are six six-movement suites in total, and I highly recommend you spend about 2 hours listening to all six suites uninterrupted. I have much more to say—which you’ll read in due time—about this prelude, and about the suites in general (each movement will get its own article soon enough). But for now, notice what Bach does at the very beginning: that low G is constantly heard even as things change around it. I’ve marked out the harmony (it may be obvious, or it may be implied) of the first five measures, where that G happens. In some cases, G is an indispensable member of the chord (it makes G major be G major, or makes E minor be E minor), and in other cases (the D7, for example), the G is not a chord-tone. This is pedal point: the harmonies are moving around a constant G. Pedal point, and why we call it that, will be getting its own article very soon.

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