I have been going through Matiegka's Grand Sonata II lately and have been struck by the prominence with which he uses V-IV progressions.
I touched on this fact a post or so ago, actually, with musical examples.
I could do more, actually, I will do more blogging on this topic but I got to thinking I have rarely ever invited readers to make comments and suggestions and this is such a time as reader feedback would be fun and useful.
Do you know of examples in the classical repertoire (for want of a better term) where a dominant chord resolves to a subdominant chord (not a submediant)? I've found two cases (recurring, even) of a V7/V to V to IV progression in Matiegka's solo guitar sonatas. I'll come back to them at some point, but while I'm thinking over these guitar sonatas I'm going to try to get to as part of the Matiegka 2023 project (now that 2024 is mostly over, I know ... ), I figured I'd ask any readers I (still?) have if they can point out cases of V-IV chord progressions (they can eventually get back to I or V) from the classical repertoire.
I know V-IV progressions are rampant in pop music so I'm not asking about examples from popular music at all. The fact that Matiegka has two V7/V to V to IV progressions will be enough to eventually write another post discussing the details of Grand Sonata II and Sonate progressive Op. 31 No. 3 but in the latter case there's no actually public domain version of that score available so, seeing as the sonata itself has been in the public domain for centuries, I'll just make do with a continuation of Ragtime and Sonata Forms and do a ragtime update of the relevant materials. It turns out Matiegka's music lends itself beautifully to being ragged up. So any of you who wanted some kind of analysis of Op. 31, No. 3, I can't do that with Matiegka's original score but I can finesse that point a bit by replicating and revising the exposition into a ragtime sonata exposition that gets you the bullet points version, if that's acceptable.
I'm not exactly ignoring current events here in the U.S., by the way, it's that I don't feel like commenting about those things and that's not, historically, been much of an interest in this blog. So no comments about how 45 just became 47, okay?
If you have a piece as an example it's preferable that it be public domain so I can dig up the score at, say, IMSLP and eventually find a performance of the piece so that I can share the score samples and relevant passages at a later time.
The implications I'm looking at for a V-IV progression in the "standard" classical repertoire probably don't even need to be spelled out for anybody who has studied attempts at blues theory.
If Matiegka used V-IV progressions on several occasions in early 19th century guitar sonatas then the upshot of that reality is that all those theory books that asserted that V never goes to IV in classical repertoire (at least circa 1808 and 1811) are quite obviously bunk. This has implications for snobs on the classical and blues sides alike. I don't feel like I have to spell them out, though, not at this point. I think smart readers will have done the math on this already.
But examples would be fun to search through if readers have them. Matiegka Grand Sonata II and Sonate progressive Op. 31 No. 3 are the givens I've already mentioned. If the examples on offer are from guitar literature so much the better.
