Passamezzo antico

Passamezzo antico

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Passamezzo and Romanesca melodic formula^[1]

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The passamezzo antico is a ground bass or chord progression that was popular during the Italian Renaissance and known throughout Europe in the 16th century.^[2] The progression is a variant of the double tonic: its major mode variant is known as the passamezzo moderno.

The sequence consists of two phrases as follows: (For an explanation of this notation see Chord progression)

i	VII	i	V
III	VII	i V	i

Though usually in the key of G minor,^[1] in the key of A minor this gives:

Am	G	Am	E
C	G	Am E	Am

The romanesca is a variant of the passamezzo antico, where the first chord is the III (e.g., a C major chord in A minor). A famous example is "Greensleeves".

The passamezzo antico chord changes are found, knowingly or not, in modern popular music culture: Carrie Underwood's debut album Some Hearts has two examples, "Before He Cheats" (a big U.S. hit in 2006) and "Starts with Goodbye". "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin is essentially a variant of the progression.

Sources

1 2 Apel, Willi (1997). The History of Keyboard Music to 1700, p.263. Trans. Tischler, Hans. ISBN 0-253-21141-7.
↑ van der Merwe, Peter. 1989. Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music, p.207. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.

Chord progressions

Terminology

By number
of chords

Three	I–IV–V–I ii–V–I turnaround V–IV–I turnaround ♭VII–V7 cadence Backdoor progression Eight-bar blues Twelve-bar blues ("Bird" changes) Sixteen-bar blues Passamezzo moderno

Four	50s progression Andalusian cadence Folia I−vi−ii−V Montgomery-Ward bridge Passamezzo antico I–V–vi–IV Romanesca Tadd Dameron turnaround

By name

List of chord progressions

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