Re: What's the relation****p between scales and chords?

"Joey Goldstein" <nospam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:fq51it$757$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Meanwhile, did someone up-thread say that Piston used upper case RN?
> Did he write out chord quality too? Or was the student expected to 
> interpret "II" as being a minor chord based on the active key?

Schoenberg used non-case sensitive numerals. One is expected to know the 
quality in the key. Alterations (like minor iv in Major) have to be 
appended.

I think Piston may have started out that way, but in the more recent
DeVoto 
editions, case sensitivity is there (IIRC, I'm not positive).

In addition to that, there are also a couple of different schools of 
inversional notation.

The "main" school is the one we're familiar with  - 6, 6/4 - etc.

But there's another school that uses more "real" figures because it uses
non 
case sensitive RN. So V4/2 in Major is V4/2, but in minor, it will be V 
4+/2 - that is, the leading tone, which will be a 4th above the bass,
would 
need to be raised. I think you can see why it's been laregely abandoned!

Nowadays, young Brits are learning a system forced upon them by the ABRSM
as 
far as I can tell. V, Vb, Vc, Vd - "d" is third inversion, so what we'd
call 
4/2. Looks like they're suffering from the same dumbing-down that we (or
we, 
not you :-) Americans are.

But back to the RN, one thing we should mention is that all authors in all

styles will sometimes speak of chords or keys of scale degrees, etc. in a 
generic manner, and they will simply say "IV", which could refer to iv or
IV 
in minor, and IV or iv in Major.

Steve