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Nocturne in C-sharp minor (Op. posth.)

F. Chopin

By Mayank Sanganeria

In C-sharp minor, this piece is 88 chord changes across 65 bars under the notes on the page — a advanced-tier piece by our difficulty audit, 91 of 97 in the library, ranked easiest to hardest. Reduced to block chords, that's a progression you can learn in a sitting; the piece you're reading is that progression wearing figuration.

Practice this piece → Practice chords → Learn it section by section → Hear the harmony → Sight-read something new →

What's inside the harmony

Reducing the piece to block chords and labeling every change turns up harmonic phenomena that are easy to miss reading the figuration straight — each one below is also its own corpus-wide census.

• Secondary dominants 10× bar 7: V7/iv · bar 15: V7/iv · bar 24: V7/VI
• Color chords 6× bar 18: #vii7 (F##) · bar 29: III+7 (G#) · bar 31: #iii7 (D#)
• Neapolitan chords 1× bar 17: bII7 (F#)
• Chord inversions 35× bar 1: iv7 (C#) (second inversion, bass C#3) · bar 2: i7 (G#) (second inversion, bass G#2) · bar 3: iv7 (C#) (second inversion, bass C#3)
• Seventh chords 40× bar 1: i7 — C#-minor seventh chord · bar 1: iv7 (C#) — F#-minor seventh chord · bar 3: i7 — C#-minor seventh chord
• Modulation 2× bar 19: bars 19–26: A major (r=0.94) · bar 32: bars 32–45: A-flat major (r=0.91)
• Pedal points 4× bar 5: C#3 held bars 5–7 under i, iiø7 (C#), V7/iv · bar 13: C#3 held bars 13–16 under i, iiø7 (C#), VI7 (C#), V7/iv · bar 47: C#3 held bars 47–49 under i, iiø7 (C#), VI7 (C#), V7/iv

Free scores

• Blocked-chord reduction (MusicXML) — the harmony skeleton the player performs
• The piece as written (compressed MusicXML)