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Cadence in Music: Functions of Musical Cadence
The cadence in music serves two important functions; 1) to provide pauses between phrases so that the brain can process musical information, and 2) to reinforce tonality. Let's have a look.
- In a spoken conversation, you don’t need to remember and keep track of every word because mentalese records the gist. Each word has symbolic (referential) meaning that relates to your already-memorized vocabulary of words.
- But in music, you do need to structure the music so that the listener can keep track of the phrases as they unfold in time because music does not carry referential meaning. You need to repeat phrases often, and you need to pause between phrases, usually via cadences. Without cadences in music, your brain has a hard time taking it all in.
That’s one function of the cadence. The other main one is to reinforce tonality.
In a full cadence, the melody usually comes to rest on the tonic note, a longer-than-usual note in an emphatic metrical position. These forceful characteristics remind the brain which note is the tonal centre.
An imperfect cadence (also called a half cadence or partial cadence) creates a sense of expectation. You’ve only stopped at a roadhouse for a burger and fries, but home is coming up, a little farther up the road. Often at the end of the next phrase. When a full cadence does not appear at the end of the next phrase, the brain really begins to wonder where things are going.