105: Beethoven and the Neapolitan

 Today’s chord is Neapolitan. The example I’ll use is of a Neapolitan chord, but not of a Neapolitan sixth chord (which would be this, but in first inversion, and is in fact the most common way you would see it.) Do not confuse it, however, for the Italian sixth; that’s an augmented sixth chord, and this is a major triad.

A Neapolitan can be quite jarring when you hear it, since in major, a) the ii chord is, as the Roman numeral notation I have used indicates, minor and b) there’s a whole step between scale degrees 1 and 2, not a half step. You create a Neapolitan by breaking both of those rules simultaneously: by creating a major chord rather than a minor one, on a flat2 of a major scale. When you do this in minor, however, you end up with what’s called a Phrygian II; go back to my article on the modern modes to review how you build the Phrygian, and why the minor-built version of this chord would have that name.

  Expectation bias is quite powerful, and because the Neapolitan breaks so many rules we have so clearly established for so long, we hardly ever see it coming. No one writes a Neapolitan by accident. Beethoven certainly didn’t, in the opening bars of the Ninth. For a long while, all we hear is an open fifth: A to E without a third, so we have no way of knowing whether we’re in major or minor. Then, after sixteen bars, D minor finally hits bursting into the concert hall with the energy of a thousand Kool-Aid Men going through walls. After one explosion introduces D minor, just as quickly, another seems to send it away for an instant: exactly the Phrygian II I mentioned earlier. We remain in D minor, at least on paper, for a while longer, so the E-flat chord that Beethoven writes in this context is completely unexpected. 

Lissten for it here, at 2:00 (but get at least a few seconds of context first): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKxX2EJozxo&list=RDVKxX2EJozxo&start_radio=1

Here, at 0:45: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDTn10XeCmU&list=RDLDTn10XeCmU&start_radio=1

Here, at 0:43: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3XQrb0Kgj8&list=RDf3XQrb0Kgj8&start_radio=1

Here at 0:54: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shxmtSEnVFg&list=RDshxmtSEnVFg&start_radio=1


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