Mediant, submediant, and minor keys?

Question

I am familiar with the degree names: tonic, supertonic, mediant, etc but not sure of their use in minor keys. Let's consider C major and minor. Some are clear, the dominant and subdominant will be G and F in both. The mediant is E in C major, is it E♭ in C minor? The submediant is even less clear, is it A♭ in C minor? What about A♮? It is an accidental in C minor but a common note nonetheless. Are there terms for the two As? What is the leading note: B♭ or B♮? B♭ is in the key signature but if a progression is actually leading up to the tonic then B♮ seems more likely even in C minor. Whichever is the leading note, how is the other referred to?

Answer 1

Hello! You asked a pretty good question, and luckily it's not as complicated as you might think. The good news is that the names of the degrees are exactly the same in major and minor keys with the exception of the 7th degree, depending on the type of minor scale that you're looking at.

In C minor, Eb, and Ab are still the mediant and submediant of the scale, regardless of any accidentals. However, B flat is not the leading tone to C natural, so instead we call it the subtonic. This also makes sense because the scale degree is no longer the leading tone because it's a whole step away. This changes if it's B natural, depending on the type of minor scale. It's still the leading tone for harmonic and ascending melodic minor scales because we're working with B natural in those cases.

However, remember that the quality of the mediant, submediant, subtonic, and leading tone degrees are totally different in each version of the major/minor keys. Hope this helped!