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6.6.12 What is a Cadence in Music? Musical Punctuation?
Before completing the circular harmonic scale, now’s the time to introduce an important component of musical structure. (Much more on structure in Chapter 8.)
As you no doubt know, small groups of notes and chords form musical units (usually two to eight bars) called phrases. These units combine into larger structures such as periods, verses, bridges, choruses, sections, movements, and so on.
Musical structure parallels the organization of verbal discourse, with its phrases, sentences, stanzas, and paragraphs. That’s not surprising, considering the intimate linkage in the brain between music and language, as discussed in previous chapters.
The sense of partial or full resolution at the end of a musical phrase is called a cadence. A cadence has melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic properties. It normally signals a return to the prevailing tonal centre. Musical cadence is a bit like punctualtion in language...but not exactly.