How can this be played?

[Martin Essery]

This is from the Fantasia, the last tune in Jones Anglo Tutor, supposedly written for 30 button Anglo. How can that C, F#, A at the end here, be played? You could make the C a grace note, but everywhere else in the tutor he writes grace notes where he means them to be played. There is no indication this was written for an instrument with a bisonic (drone) C in the left hand, which would make it playable. Is it a typo? In which case, what would the correct notes be? Changing the C to a D seems reasonable. Am I missing something?

[Leah Velleman]

A D definitely makes more harmonic sense there. (Though I guess with the C it would be a dominant seventh chord without the root, which isn't so weird.) 

[Martin Essery]

1 hour ago, Leah Velleman said:

A D definitely makes more harmonic sense there. (Though I guess with the C it would be a dominant seventh chord without the root, which isn't so weird.) 

Thank you ❤️ That was the conclusion I came to, that it should be a D, the C does not sound right to me, but then composers sometimes do odd things 😄 There is a 9th earlier on, which I thought was pretty 'brave' for the era.

[Leah Velleman]

I mean, by the mid 1800s, harmonies were getting pretty hairy in the orchestral world. I wonder if anyone's tried playing Wagner on the anglo... 😅

[Martin Essery]

6 hours ago, Leah Velleman said:

I mean, by the mid 1800s, harmonies were getting pretty hairy in the orchestral world. I wonder if anyone's tried playing Wagner on the anglo... 😅

That would be interesting:-) I am enjoying playing the Sarabandes from Bach's Cello Suite at the moment and even in that there are some quite strong harmonies certainly some that are pretty biting on the concertina, even if they sound more mellow on a cello:-D

[David Barnert]

I agree with everything above and would add: If the next chord doesn’t contain a B below middle C and a G above the F# then the C is almost certainly an error. Nobody writing music as well-behaved as this would write an augmented 4th (C - F#) that doesn’t resolve to the adjacent B and G. And, of course, if there IS no next chord then the sequence ends with a dissonance, also unlikely.

[Martin Essery]

On 5/21/2023 at 2:09 PM, David Barnert said:

I agree with everything above and would add: If the next chord doesn’t contain a B below middle C and a G above the F# then the C is almost certainly an error. Nobody writing music as well-behaved as this would write an augmented 4th (C - F#) that doesn’t resolve to the adjacent B and G. And, of course, if there IS no next chord then the sequence ends with a dissonance, also unlikely.

Apologies for curtailing the music, of course the progression is important. It continues thus, which works nicely with a D replacing the errant C.