Mozart Example
In the Fifth edition of Harmony by Walter Piston and Mark DeVoto, a passage from the last movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata K. 283 in G major serves as one illustration of secondary dominants. Below, the harmony alone is first given, labeled both for the literal names of the chords and for their chord number in the key of G major.
It can be seen that this passage has three secondary dominants, each one followed (as expected) by the chord of which it is the dominant. The final four bars form a back-cycle, ending in a standard dominant-tonic cadence, which concludes the phrase. The lines drawn below the diagram show each instance in which a dominant is followed by its corresponding tonic.
The harmony is distributed more subtly between the notes, and goes faster, in Mozart's original:
The secondary dominants here create a rapidly descending chromatic harmony, an effective lead-up to the tonic cadence at the end of the phrase. There are many similar passages in Mozart's music.
Read more about this topic: Secondary Dominant
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