Lesson 15 The Leading-tone triad and other First-Inversion practices

Lesson 15 The Leading-tone Triad and other First -Inversion Practices

Part I- The leading tone triad 

Important: The Leading-tone scale degree Should NOT be doubled in part writing!

The leading-tone triad has two common tones with the V Chord

V     -     G - B - D

vii°  -            B - D - F

The leading tone has such a strong pull towards the tonic that if it were to be doubled, both voices would have to move to the tonic, thus creating parallelism.

Here are some examples of part writing and irregular doubling with the leading tone triad:

 Fig.1 Leading tone resolution

Listen:

In this example, the V chord is in first inversion to avoid parallelism.

Fig.2 Unison structure to avoid parallelism.

Listen:

Part II- Imperfect authentic cadences

a cadence of vii° to I(or i) is considered an imperfect authentic cadence.
As is a cadence of any inversion of V to I

Fig.3 Imperfect Authentic cadences

Listen: