Neapolitan sixth

British

noun

(in musical harmony) a chord composed of the subdominant of the key, plus a minor third and a minor sixth. Harmonically it is equivalent to the first inversion of a major chord built upon the flattened supertonic

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Neapolitan sixth

The short Largo is quaint and expressive; the ff chord of the Neapolitan sixth is of fine effect.

From The Pianoforte Sonata Its Origin and Development by J. S. (John South) Shedlock

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023