Just to remind you…
For something that’s essentially simple, music has a lot of complicated rules and nomenclature (I suspect academics/theorists of making a minor industry out of it!) Here’s an example:
Every three-note chord, built on the notes of a major scale (in this case C major), has both a name and a (separate) roman numeral. The roman numerals are really quite helpful, since, if they’re uppercase the chord is major; if they’re lowercase it’s minor (I’ve also colour-coded them for you!). So the greens 1, 4, and 5 (the tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant) are major, while the blue 2, 3, and 6 (the supertonic, the mediant, and the submediant) are minor.
And what about the red 7? And why is there a superscript o after the number? The leading note chord is an exception. In all the other six chords the distance between the top note and the bottom is a perfect fifth; while in this chord, based on the leading note, that distance is a diminished fifth, an unstable interval, and the chord itself is known as ‘diminished’ which is what the superscript o designates.
This applies to every major key.
Cadences
After that small essay you’ll be pleased, no doubt, to read that there are only basically four types of cadence. Cadences are the punctuation – the full stops, the commas, semicolons, etc. – of tonal music and, like punctuation marks, they mostly appear at the end of a phrase.
Here are the four:
They’re all structured exactly as written, except for the imperfect cadence, where the V (the dominant), can be preceded by a number of chords not just I (the tonic).
A few examples (from millions!!):
One of the most famous (and loudest) perfect cadences of all:
Here’s Tchaikovsky using the imperfect cadence to keep our focus on the oboe melody until, at last, he closes this long theme with the finality of a perfect cadence:
Three very(!) different plagal cadences, a cadence familiar to anybody who’s ever sung the word ‘Amen’:
Dvořák enlivens the four times-repeated four-bar phrases of the beginning of his e minor, ‘Dumka’, Slavonic Dance – by ending each with a different cadence. The second phrase, ending with a move from a dominant seventh on B to C, is a good example of the interrupted cadence.
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