Sound Reasoning
Table of Contents
Part II: Hearing Harmony
18.1 Hearing Harmony: What is Harmony?
18.2 Harmony in Western Music
18.3 Expressing Harmony
18.4 Listening Gallery: Expressing Harmony
18.5 Harmonic Rhythm
18.6 Listening Gallery: Harmonic Rhythm
18.7 Cadences
18.8 Listening Gallery: Cadences
18.9 The Tonic
18.10 Circular and Linear Progressions
18.11 Listening Gallery: Circular and Linear Progressions
18.12 The Major-minor Contrast
18.13 Modes and Scales
18.14 Hearing the Mode
18.15 Listening Gallery: Hearing the Mode
18.16 Tonic, Mode and Key
18.17 Listening Gallery: Tonic, Mode and Key
18.18 Music Within a Key
18.19 Listening Gallery: Music Within a Key
18.20 Postponed Closure
18.21 Listening Gallery: Postponing Closure
18.22 Chromaticism
18.23 Listening Gallery: Chromaticism
18.24 Dissonance
18.25 Leaving the Key
18.26 Harmonic Distance
18.27 Modulation
18.28 Harmonic Goals
18.29 The Return to the Tonic
18.30 Final Closure
18.31 Listening Gallery: Final Closure
18.32 Reharmonizing a Melody
18.33 Listening Gallery: Reharmonizing a Melody
18.34 Conclusion
18.7 Cadences
A cadence is a harmonic arrival point. Cadences are the pillars of harmonic structures; They mark a work’s harmonic destinations.
In the Chorale settings of J.S. Bach, the rhythm pauses at each cadence.
In other music, cadences punctuate the end of phrases.
Cadences serve as a musical GPS: They help you locate yourself harmonically. If the cadences keep returning to the same chord, the harmonic voyage is very circumscribed. In this excerpt from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in c-minor, the music wanders harmonically but keeps cadencing to the same harmonic goal. The last of these cadences, just before the piano enters, is particularly emphatic.
This excerpt from Arvo Pärt’s Fratres creates a solemn stasis by repeatedly cadencing in the same place.
If, however, the cadences roam more widely, the harmonic structure is more adventurous. In this example from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G-Major, the cadence points change, propelling the music towards new goals.
The central advice of Hearing Harmony is “Listen for cadences, not for chords.” Cadences reveal crucial information: They tell you the mode; and they show you if the harmony is moving or staying put. As we will explore in the succeeding modules, following the trajectory of the cadences is the key to hearing large-scale harmonic structure.