ABSTRACT
This chapter presents altered dominants and altered dominant seventh chords, and discusses embellishing diminished seventh chords. The dominant was the last bulwark of diatonic harmony to buckle under chromaticism’s relentless advance. Altered dominants are therefore a small category of chromatic harmonies that involve either raising or lowering the chord fifth. Altered dominants are usually linear, and the altered tone can usually be analyzed as a chromatic passing tone. The root is an altered tone that acts more like a chromatic embellishment than a chord root. The seventh is a common tone and is therefore unable to resolve downward. None of the chords are as prevalent as secondary functions and modal borrowings, which constitute the bulk of the harmonic chromaticism in tonal music.
