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Briefly treating a non-tonic chord as a temporary tonic by preceding it with its own dominant (secondary dominant). Shorter and less committed than modulation.
Tonicization adds harmonic color without leaving the home key. V/V (the dominant of the dominant) is the most common: it makes V feel momentarily like a tonic. Use secondary dominants to add chromatic interest to diatonic progressions without actually modulating.
In C major: D7–G (V/V–V) briefly tonicizes G without leaving C major. This is the most common chromatic harmony in tonal music.
Tonicization is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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