page_title: Sixth chord
section_title: In classical music
hierarchical_section_title: Sixth chord / In classical music
caption_attribution_description: English: Debussy, from 'General Lavine - eccentric'
context_page_description: The term sixth chord refers to two different kinds of chord, the first in classical music and the second in modern popular music.
  The original meaning of the term is a chord in first inversion, in other words with its third in the bass and its root a sixth above it. This is how the term is still used in classical music today, and in this sense it is called also a chord of the sixth. A first-inversion C major chord is shown below.
  In modern popular music, a sixth chord is any triad with an added sixth above the root as a chord factor. This was traditionally called an added sixth chord or triad with added sixth since Jean-Philippe Rameau in the 18th century. It is not common to designate chord inversions in popular music, so there is no need for a term designating the first inversion of a chord, and so the term sixth chord in popular music is a short way of saying added sixth chord. When not otherwise specified, it usually means a major triad with an added major sixth interval, such as the chord below.
  However, a minor triad is also used, together with the same interval, resulting in a minor sixth chord.
context_section_description: An unusual use of this chord at the start of a work occurs in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E♭ major, Op 31 No. 3 (1802):
  According to Denis Matthews, “the most striking moment in the sonata is its opening, where an ambiguous added-sixth chord on the subdominant resolves itself through a series of halting steps, rhythmically and harmonically, towards the tonic.”
  Debussy frequently used the sixth chord, for example in his piano prelude General Lavine-Eccentric (1913), whose idiom alludes to the popular idioms of cakewalk and ragtime of the early 1900s.  The following passage “is in F major; its seeming pentatonicism (C–D–F–G–A) is found to be the outline of the tonic added sixth chord, plus the G as passing tone…”
  
  The timeless, meditative closing bars of Gustav Mahler’s song “Abschied” from Das Lied von der Erde (1909) fully exploit the expressive power and ambiguity of the sixth chord.  “The final sonority, the famous added-sixth chord, is particularly ingenious... because it fuses the two principal keys of Das Lied (A minor and C major).”
  Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935) ends with a “tonic triad of B flat, with added sixth  [that] follows a harmonic progression found frequently in 1930s dance-band arrangements.”  However, Richard Taruskin points out that Berg's "chord thus created, B flat, D, F, G had an important poetic resonance", as it echoes the ending of Mahler's "Abschied." Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements (1945) “incorporates elements of American popular music, most famously the final chord, a Hollywood added-sixth chord of ever there was one.”  (Stravinsky himself later criticized his choice of the final D♭ sixth chord as ‘commercial.’ ) Messiaen’s “Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus”, the final movement of his Quartet for the End of Time (1941) opens with a meditative theme “played entirely over a 6-4 chord with added sixth”
caption: Debussy, from 'General Lavine - eccentric'
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