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Fifth Progression Chord Movement
In harmony, both chord changes—the chord C moving to the chord G (thought of as going “up,” which means counting forward from the first chord: C, D, E, F, G), and the chord G moving to the chord C (thought of as going “down,” which means counting backward from the first chord to the next one in the progression: G, F, E, D, C), are called, by convention, fifth progressions. Even though, in terms of melodic scale degrees, G – C is a fourth.
So, unlike the situation with melodic intervals, you never refer to a chord change such as G – C as a harmonic interval of a fourth (a “fourth progression”). No such thing.
Figure 46 shows an example of how fifth progressions get their names. The chord change is from G major in root position (top line) to C major, second inversion (middle line) to F major in root position (bottom line), or the reverse, from F to C to G. Although all the notes change simultaneously as you move from line to line, the arrows show only the chord roots (after which the chords are named).
FFIGURE 46 Fifth Progressions, Up and Down