Complex chord symbol as an illustration

[David Ward]

I hope one or two of you who regularly use chord symbols might help me here.

For the purposes of illustration I'm looking for a valid chord symbol of almost Einsteinian complexity together with the chord fully written out in ‘normal’ (for me) notation.

[Peter Thomsen]

I am not sure what you mean.

Would the attached example do?

[David Ward]

That's the sort of thing I mean, although I think I've seen even more convoluted ones over false basses and including diminished and augmented elements.

The point being that if you write the notes out things are simple enough however ‘advanced’ the chord, but chord symbol notation eventually becomes rather stretched. After I stopped doing things (for a suitable fee) on the periphery of the popular music world back in the early 1970s, I've not had much to do with such symbols. However, I seem to be about to work on something likely to involve both professional opera singing and traditional folk singing both professional and amateur. For this I want to discuss notational options and was hoping to illustrate an extreme chord symbol as part of the discussion.

[David Ward]

I think this from Wikipedia (screenshot) suggests the sort of thing I need, especially if over ‘wrong’ basses, as I'm sure I've seen on occasion. At their most extreme they seem to involve advanced arithmetic - it would surely be much simpler to write the notes as block chords with the freedom to improvise from these blocks in whatever style is required.

The function of figured bass I understand, but chord symbols have sometimes struck me as tending to replace the simple (written notes) with the complicated (unless the harmony is confined to diatonic triads and their simpler derivatives such as dominant 7ths, augmented 6ths &c).