What is a cadence? : theoretical and analytical perspectives on cadences in the classical repertoire

347 Pages·2015·10.43 MB·English

by  Markus Neuwirth

WHAT IS A CADENCE?
THEORETICAL AND ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON CADENCES IN THE CLASSICAL REPERTOIRE

What Is a Cadence?
Theoretical and Analytical Perspectives
on Cadences in the Classical Repertoire
Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé (eds)
Leuven University Press
© 2015 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire
Pers Leuven. Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)
All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this
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way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers.
ISBN 9789462700154
D / 2015 / 1869 / 19
NUR: 664
Cover and layout: Jurgen Leemans
Cover illustration: ‘Cadence #1 (a short span of time), Robert Owen, 2003’, CC-BY-
NC-ND Matthew Perkins 2009.
Contents 5
CONTENTS
Introduction: What is a Cadence? 7
Nine Perspectives
Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé
Harmony and Cadence in Gjerdingen’s “Prinner” 17
William E. Caplin
Beyond ‘Harmony’ 59
The Cadence in the Partitura Tradition
Felix Diergarten
The Half Cadence and Related Analytic Fictions 85
Poundie Burstein
Fuggir la Cadenza, or The Art of Avoiding Cadential
Closure 117
Physiognomy and Functions of Deceptive Cadences in the Classical Repertoire
Markus Neuwirth
The Mystery of the Cadential Six-Four 157
Danuta Mirka
6 Contents
The Mozartean Half Cadence 185
Nathan John Martin and Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers
“Hauptruhepuncte des Geistes” 215
Punctuation Schemas and the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata
Vasili Byros
The Perception of Cadential Closure 253
David Sears
Towards a Syntax of the Classical Cadence 287
Martin Rohrmeier and Markus Neuwirth
List of Contributors 339
Index 343
Introduction: What is a Cadence? 7
INTRODUCTION:
WHAT IS A CADENCE?
Nine Perspectives
Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé
T
he concept of closure is no doubt crucial to understanding what many con-
sider the essence of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music: its emphatic
goal-directedness.1 The musical “phrase” resulting from the tonal motion towards
a goal may consequently be deemed emblematic of tonal music as a whole.2 It is
therefore unsurprising that the cadence, the primary means of articulating the tonal
goal and thus of achieving closure, has received considerable attention in virtually all
scholarly and pedagogical work on tonal music. Especially in more recent writings
on the analysis of musical form, the cadence occupies a pivotal position, no matter
whether scholars are referring to theme types or to more complex large-scale formal
designs such as the sonata form.3
Even if everyone agrees, however, that cadences are of the utmost importance to the
analysis of tonal music, a key question remains: what exactly is a cadence? Paraphrasing
Augustine, we could answer that if no one asks us, we know; but if we wish to explain it
to those who ask, we do not know.4 Part of cadences’ resistance to definition lies in the
sheer abundance and almost infinite variety of cadential realizations revealed by even
a superficial examination of the actual compositional practice of the eighteenth and
(early) nineteenth centuries. This variety not only seems to defy any attempt to provide a
clear-cut, unequivocal, and all-encompassing definition, but also stands in sharp con-
trast to the rather simplistic descriptions of cadential patterns found in numerous mod-
ern textbooks on tonal harmony. Part of the problem is due to the fact that cadences
have evolved over a long period of time in different stylistic contexts and local tradi-
tions, leading both to a multiplicity of cadential patterns and, to complicate things even
more, to a Babylonian confusion in the terminology used to describe them.5
1. E.g., Schenker, Free Composition (1979), 5; Lerdahl and Jackendoff, A Generative Theory (1983), 174; and
Caplin, Classical Form (1998), 42.
2. E.g., Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm (1989), 5.
3. See, for instance, Caplin, Classical Form (1998); and Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements (2006).
4. Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine (2006), 214.
5. See Bergé, Martin, Neuwirth, Lodewyckx, and Herregodts, Concise Cadence Compendium (in preparation).
Both the sheer infinite variety of cadential realizations and the terminological multiplicity were noted
8 Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé
Our quest to discover the essential characteristics of the cadence, as implied in the
notoriously thorny “What-is?” question, faces the obvious difficulty that we might end
up identifying only a “common denominator.”6 It is highly questionable, however,
whether such a reductionist approach would be capable of providing the differentia
specifica that would allow us to differentiate the cadence from other, non-cadential
types of progressions (prolongational or sequential). In other words, any attempt to
single out necessary and sufficient criteria underlying the definition of cadence seems
doomed to failure, which might suggest that there is no such thing as “the” cadence. If
this is the case, one could argue that the various instances (or “tokens”) of the general
cadence concept are related to one another not by way of a shared essence, but rather
by way of a Wittgensteinian family resemblance, with crisscrossing and overlapping
bundles of features as well as more proximate and more distantly related realizations.7
Many researchers specializing in music from the common-practice period might
not consider the difficulty involved in creating a water-tight definition to be prob-
lematic, as they have acquired an astonishingly robust intuitive understanding of the
concept through repeated exposure to numerous instances commonly labeled as
“cadences.” They have learned to determine with a comparatively high degree of con-
fidence what constitutes a cadence and which elements must be present (in which
temporal order) in order to be able to speak of a cadence. This is not very surpris-
ing, given that from the very beginning of their music-theoretical training, students
are taught to distinguish between various types of cadences—perfect and imperfect
authentic, half, deceptive, and evaded—as well as to perceive the different degrees of
closural strength conveyed by each of these types.8
Yet the impression of familiarity with the cadence is deceptive. In fact, despite the
importance of cadences in music-theoretical training and their ubiquity in analytical
writings, “cadence” remains “one of the most malleable concepts in music theory,”9
with much controversy lingering over what constitutes a cadence. When seeking to sub-
stantiate their respective notions of the cadence, modern music theorists will in most
cases succeed in identifying a historical precedent, since numerous, partially conflict-
ing definitions and taxonomies of the concept have been put forth over the past four
hundred years or so. As Thomas Christensen puts it, “most musicians use the word to
designate some sort of closing, although the criteria by which such a closing is defined
as early as 1745 by Meinrad Spieß in his Tractatus Musicus Compositorio-Practicus, 95.
6. In the case of an authentic cadence, a simple dominant-to-tonic motion (see Temperley, The Cognition
of Basic Musical Structures [2001], 336).
7. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), 65–68.
8. Although plagal cadences have been mentioned in numerous textbooks, the notion that there is
such a thing as a plagal cadence in the classical style has been challenged quite strongly by William
Caplin, most recently in his Analyzing Classical Form (2013), 56, in which he speaks of “the myth of the
plagal cadence.”
9. Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (1993), 113.
Introduction: What is a Cadence? 9
and categorized have varied over the centuries […].”10 The historical diversity of the
cadence concept may itself suffice to dash our hopes of finding any simple answer to
the question of what a cadence is. An astonishing number of open questions crucial
to the definition of cadences still remain, a selection of which appear in the following:
Are half cadences, imperfect authentic cadences, and perfect authentic cadences
separate cadence types, or should half cadences and imperfect authentic cadences be
better understood as transformations of an ideal prototype, the perfect authentic
cadence? Similarly, can the deceptive cadence, often described as a separate third (or
fourth) cadence type, be better understood as a cadential strategy operating on the
norm of the perfect authentic cadence? Is it a necessary requirement for an authen-
tic cadence to feature a penultimate root-position dominant? Is there such a thing
as a half cadence ending on a dissonant or inverted dominant(-seventh) harmony?
When deciding whether a given harmonic progression represents a cadence proper
(as opposed to a prolongational or sequential progression), and, if so, what type of
cadence (authentic or half) it might be, are we to rely on harmonic and voice-lead-
ing characteristics alone at the expense of allegedly secondary parameters (such as
rhythm, meter, dynamics, texture, and instrumentation)?11 Does only the harmonic-
melodic content determine the type of cadence (or the musical syntax), as is often
assumed, and do secondary parameters affect only the rhetorical strength of the closure
conveyed by a given cadence?12 Can different realizations of the same cadential type
convey different degrees of closure and thus reflect different degrees of structural
significance? For instance, does the presence of dissonance (e.g., a 7–6 ligatura
or a cadential 6) have any impact on the structural significance of a given cadence,
4
or should such features just be regarded as expendable embellishments? Is there a
natural and unequivocal beginning point for a cadence?13 Is it legitimate and use-
ful to construe an entire movement as a greatly expanded cadential progression, as
Riemann, Schenker, and Schoenberg did in their respective theories, to the extent
that the cadence becomes a “master formula” or a “signature” for tonality14? Or rather
would we be ill-advised to stretch the cadence concept beyond its boundaries so that
it becomes nothing but an empty metaphor?
Each of these questions calls for a more careful delineation of the cadence con-
cept. Tempting though it may be to adopt a reductionist (or essentialist) approach,
it is questionable whether this would truly allow us to penetrate the “deep structure”
10. Ibid.
11. On the concept of “secondary parameters,” see Meyer, Style and Music (1989), 14ff.
12. On the distinction between syntax and rhetoric, see Caplin, “The Classical Cadence” (2004), 106–112.
13. See, for instance, Richards, “Closure in Classical Themes” (2010), 29, on the difficulty of locating the start
of a cadential function. Often the I6 chord (or, alternatively, the ii6 chord) is considered a conventionalized
sign announcing an upcoming full cadential progression; see Caplin, Classical Form (1998), 111.
14. See, for instance, Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967), 16: “In a general way every
piece of music resembles a cadence, of which each phrase will be a more or less elaborate part.”