# Identifying This Diminished Chord?



## Atsui (Aug 5, 2013)

Hello

I am currently teaching myself theory and composition and find it helpful to go through scores labelling the chords to see the ways composers used them.

I am currently doing a harmonic analysis on Act II Scene 10 of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky and have come across this chord and am unable to think of a way to label it.

It contains the notes G# B and E# which leads me to think E# diminished in first inversion, but what would you call this? As in you label the tonic chord as i, a Neapolitan 6th as N6, Italian augmented 6th as It6, so what technique is this? #iv°?

Thank you, here is a picture of the mentioned chord


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dim vii of V7 is actually a pretty commonly used chord, and you should probably label it as such here, given that it really is used as a lead-in to a dominant-tonic cadence.


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

I think more likely it has modulated for one beat to F sharp minor, and it is a diminised 7th chord so F sharp minor vii°.
I'm not completely sure though

EDIT: didn't see Mahlerian's post


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## Atsui (Aug 5, 2013)

Thank you very much for your responses, so would I be correct in notating it like this?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Technically perhaps, but the "iv6/3" is a V7 with a suspension and a passing note. There's really no need to notate the passing chords if they are not accented more than normal.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

schuberkovich said:


> I think more likely it has modulated for one beat to F sharp minor, and it is a diminised 7th chord so F sharp minor vii°.
> I'm not completely sure though
> 
> EDIT: didn't see Mahlerian's post


One beat, no matter what the harmony, is not enough to qualify as a modulation


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