Degree (scale)

What it means

The degree designates the position of a note within a scale, counted from the tonic. In C major, C is the first, D the second, E the third degree, and so on. Degrees are designated with Roman numerals. Decisive is that the degree indicates a relation, not an absolute note: the same D is, in C major, the second, in G major, the fifth degree — and sounds correspondingly different.

Musical use

From the uneven distribution of the semitone steps it follows that every degree has a character of its own. The first is a point of rest, the fifth carries the dominant, the seventh is, in major, the leading tone and presses upward, the fourth falls to the third. Some degrees carry names of their own: tonic, subdominant, dominant, mediant, submediant, leading tone.

On every degree a chord can be built consisting only of notes within the scale — the diatonic chord. In major this yields three major, three minor, and one diminished triad, with the diminished one standing on the seventh degree. Scale-degree theory describes music through the sequence of these numbers; function theory additionally asks about the role of every sonority. The two systems complement each other but should not be mixed within one analysis.

The degree as a position in the scale is to be distinguished from the step as a movement between neighbouring notes; the two terms are occasionally confused in everyday use.

In scale-degree theory, which goes back to Gottfried Weber and Simon Sechter, every degree is the basis of a chord named after it. Function theory, by contrast, combines the degrees into three functions.

Performance practice

When practising, think in degrees instead of in absolute notes — whoever knows that a note is the third or the seventh degree also knows how it is to be shaped and intonated. Sing scales and name the degrees as you do so. And use degree-thinking when transposing: the relations stay the same, only the starting point changes.