What are Modal Cadences by Glen Halls

2015

Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music, 2010

In this paper, I challenge two basic principles regarding cadences in the classical style, as clarified by William E. Caplin. First, I argue that melody and texture contribute to the onset of cadential function. Secondly, I contend that themes may end not only with a half or authentic cadence, but also with a closural function, which provides a substitute for cadential function though a cadence-like progression. Moreover, I discuss how a theme may end with a cadence such that its melody and bass resolve at different times, a phenomenon I call a separated cadence.

2015

This dissertation traces the development of the concept of the cadence in the history of music theory. It proposes a division of the history of cadential theorizing into three periods, and elucidates these periods with four studies of particularly significant doctrines of musical closure. The first of these periods is the prehistory of the cadence, which lasted from the dawn of medieval music theory through the fifteenth century. During this time theorists such as John of Affligem (ca. 1100), whose writings are the subject of the first study, developed an analogy between music and the classical doctrine of punctuation to begin to describe how pieces and their constituent parts can conclude. The second period begins at the turn of the sixteenth century, with the innovative theory expounded by the authors of the Cologne school, which forms the subject of the second study. These authors identified the phenomenon of musical closure as an independent concept worthy of theoretical investigation, and established the first robustly polyphonic cadential doctrine to account for it. For the following three centuries theorists frequently made new contributions to the theorizing of the cadence in their writings, as exemplified by the remarkable taxonomy of cadences in the work of Johann Wolfgang Caspar Printz (1641-1717), the subject of the third study. By the early nineteenth century, however, cadential theorizing had largely ossified. Instead, authors such as A. B. Marx (1795-1866), on whose writings the fourth study focuses, only drew upon the concept of the cadence i TABLE OF CONTENTS

THIS STUDY EXPLORES THE UNDERLYING MECHANISMS responsible for the perception of cadential closure in Mozart's keyboard sonatas. Previous investigations into the experience of closure have typically relied upon the use of abstract harmonic formulae as stimuli. However, these formulae often misrepresent the ways in which composers articulate phrase endings in tonal music. This study, on the contrary, examines a wide variety of cadential types typically found in the classical style, including evaded cadences, which have yet to be examined in an experimental setting. The present findings reveal that cadential categories play a pivotal role in the perception of closure, and for musicians especially, ratings of the cadential categories provide empirical support for a model of cadential strength proposed in music theory. A number of rhetorical features also affect participants' ratings of closure, such as formal context, the presence of a melodic dissonance at the cadential arrival, and the use of a trill within the penultimate dominant. Finally, the results indicate that expertise modulates attention, with musicians privileging bassline motion and nonmusicians attending primarily to the soprano voice.

Journal of Music Theory, 2003

Studia Musicologica 51/1–2, 2010

Although a half cadence marks the end of the transition section in most sonata-form expositions and recapitulations, in many of Haydn's sonata-form movements -especially those from around the 1760s -the end of the transition is instead articulated by a firm perfect authentic cadence. This establishes a point of harmonic resolution, rather than momentum, at this crucial formal juncture. As such, it yields an overall formal shape that departs from "textbook" sonata-form descriptions, which are based largely on later stylistic norms. The practice of having a strong tonic arrive in the middle of the exposition or recapitulation is a strategy that Haydn shared with other composers who flourished in the mid-eighteenth century, and it well accords with the descriptions of formal procedures found in Heinrich Christoph Koch's Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition.

2016

In jazz studies and jazz theory, »modal jazz« is a well-established, but rather vague term. As jazz theorist Mark Levine puts it, »[m]odal tunes provide much more space for improvising on each chord compared to previous jazz tunes and standards […]. Because of this, it was natural for musicians to focus on the scale, or mode, of each chord, rather than on the chord itself.« 1 However, several authors emphasize that improvising on a certain scale or »mode« does not necessarily entail being restricted to the pitches of only that scale. For example, Barry Kernfeld writes that, »modal improvisation often unfolds in a flexible and unsystematic way that undermines the identity of specific ethnic or ecclesiastical modes […]«. 2 Although some of the church modes (Phrygian, Dorian etc.) are employed in modal jazz composition and improvisation, there does not appear to be any direct relation to medieval or non-Western practices of modality. However, there are links to African American music traditions, such as the blues, which are rooted in a non-functional harmonic organisation of sung melodic patterns accompanied by guitar or piano patterns. 3 Robert Hodson states that modal jazz could be better characterised as »a succession of static yet colourful blocks of music, and this stasis is a result of treating modes as collections of pitches in a way that relaxes the forward-moving tensions associated with goaloriented tonal music«. 4 Keith Waters sums up the discussion about modal improvisation in jazz research by indicating the different meanings of the term, ranging from improvisation over scales (instead of chords) and forms with a slow harmonic rhythm, often over pedal-points, to non-functional harmonic progressions in post-1960 jazz. 5 This broad usage of »mode« and »modal« in contemporary jazz, however, tends to dilute the original meaning of these terms. In music theory and ethnomusicology, the terms are applied to »open-ended heterogeneous networks of melodic types« on the one hand, and to »closed systems of music-theoretical categories« on the other. 6 As Lewis Porter points out, jazz theorists and jazz musicians generally use »mode« in this second, »closed-system« sense and define modes as types of scales. 7 »By the mid-18th century«, Powers writes, »›mode‹ in European languages meant a collection of degrees of a scale (and its aggregate intervallic content) being governed by a single chief degree: a mode was a scale with a tonic, which was the last note of a melody or the root of a final triad. This is the sense in which the major and minor scales, as well as the so-called 1