Tonicisation of Secondary Dominant in D Minor?

Question

Okay, so I'm basically just hoping someone can tell me if I'm on the right or wrong track here. I have to implement the technique described in the title in a piece I've written for an assessment. In some of my notes, they imply that you can simply move a perfect fifth down or a perfect fourth up from a dominant chord to create a secondary dominant - does this sound right? And then, to tonicize that secondary dominant, do you simply pretend as if you're in the key based on that note and write triads in that key? For example - my piece is in D Minor, so if I were to say take chord III (F Major) - would a perfect fourth up be A? - and if so, would I then treat it as A Major or minor for the following chords? Hope I've given enough info, any advice would be so greatly appreciated. I've come to at least a basic understanding about the other techniques I've been asked to apply but this one is still really troubling me.

Answer 1

There's some confusion in your description, so I'm not entirely sure whether you're on the right track or not.

•You don't tonicize a secondary dominant, you use a secondary dominant to tonicize a chord other than the tonic chord.

•Once you've chosen the chord (for instance, F major, the III chord in D minor), you build the dominant 7th chord on the note a perfect 4th below or perfect 5th above—in this case, C. So the secondary dominant you're building here is a C dominant 7 chord, C-E-G-B flat. The Roman numeral would be V7/III.

•Does that help? Please review the language in the assignment again. If they're really asking you to "tonicize a secondary dominant" I'll need some more information to help you.