← Real Sight Reader · Secondary dominants

Applied leading-tone chords: the pull without the root

Take a secondary dominant, remove its root, and what's left is a diminished chord built on the borrowed leading tone — viio7/x. Same magnetic pull toward the target chord, but darker and more compact: composers reach for it when they want the tension without the weight. Our corpus has 251 of them across 53 pieces, labeled where they happen.

Practice with the pieces that use it →

The census

chord	count	pulls toward
viiø7/V	45	V
viiø7/VII	31	VII
viio7/V	21	V
viio7/v	20	v
viio7/vi	16	vi
viiø7/iv	16	iv
viio7/iv	16	iv
viiø7/ii	15	ii

The half-diminished flavor (viiø7) leans gentler; the fully diminished (viio7) is the one that can resolve almost anywhere — which is exactly why Bach and Chopin both lean on it at the turns.

Hear them in real pieces

Arabesque No. 1 C. Debussy 25 applied LT chords bar 2: viiø7/V (A) · bar 13: viiø7/ii · bar 93: viio7/vi (B)
Prelude 10 in E minor (BWV 879) J. S. Bach 19 applied LT chords bar 15: viio/v · bar 24: viio/VII · bar 25: viiø7/iv (B)
Liebestraum No. 3 F. Liszt 10 applied LT chords bar 4: viiø7/V (F) · bar 36: viiø7/iii (D) · bar 40: viiø7/viio (A)
Prelude 7 in E-flat major (BWV 876) J. S. Bach 10 applied LT chords bar 9: viiø7/V (C) · bar 15: viio/V (C) · bar 19: viio7/vi (D)
Prelude 21 in B-flat major (BWV 890) J. S. Bach 9 applied LT chords bar 10: viiø7/V (D) · bar 26: viiø7/ii · bar 45: viio7/vi (C)
Prelude 11 in F major (BWV 880) J. S. Bach 8 applied LT chords bar 14: viiø7/V (A) · bar 30: viio7/vi (G) · bar 36: viio7/iii (B)
Prelude 18 in G-sharp minor (BWV 887) J. S. Bach 8 applied LT chords bar 12: viio7/iv (D#) · bar 14: viio7/VII (D) · bar 14: viiø7/iv (D#)
Prelude 17 in A-flat major (BWV 886) J. S. Bach 7 applied LT chords bar 5: viio/V (F) · bar 9: viiø7/V (C) · bar 26: viio7/vi (G)
Prelude 12 in F minor (BWV 881) J. S. Bach 7 applied LT chords bar 5: viiø7/VII (C) · bar 33: viio7/iv · bar 35: viio/VII
Prelude 5 in D major (BWV 850) J. S. Bach 7 applied LT chords bar 7: viiø7/ii (A) · bar 16: viio7/ii · bar 17: viio7/vi (E)
Prelude 2 in C minor (BWV 847) J. S. Bach 7 applied LT chords bar 20: viio7/v (A) · bar 29: viiø7/VII (C) · bar 29: viio/v (A)
Prelude 7 in E-flat major (BWV 852) J. S. Bach 6 applied LT chords bar 29: viiø7/V (C) · bar 51: viiø7/vi (D) · bar 52: viio7/vi

Go deeper

Hear the difference by ear → Dominant pull (V7/x) vs diminished pull (viio7/x) — train until the two flavors are unmistakable.
The theory: tonicization → Applied chords of both flavors — why they work and how to write them.
The dominant flavor → The V7/x survey this page shadows.