# Is there a name for this Medieval/Renaissance cadence?



## Gallus

e.g. starting at 23 seconds in this video:






It's so ubiquitous in Medieval and Renaissance music that it practically defines the sound of the period for me, but I've never known its name before. Is there any musicological reason why it was so pervasive in early music?


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## EdwardBast

I don't have the notated music, but: It's a standard cadence formula in Dorian mode (These singers seem to be singing it a whole step higher than what I'm guessing is the notated pitch, putting the cadence on E instead of D?). I'm not sure I'm getting the notes on the right beats, but here is the cadence you singled out notated in Dorian mode:









The reason it's ubiquitous is its simplicity and elegance. It was standard in this era to have cadences on perfect intervals, either an octave, as in this case, or an octave plus a fifth. The major 6th (E-C#) resolving outward to an octave we see in the Ockeghem example, is simply the most obvious and smoothest of the limited options available given the constraints of the then current principles of voice-leading and having to end on an octave. The suspension toward the end (the D sustained over the E) is what makes it elegant, by putting the voices rhythmically out of step and adding a bit of dissonance before the resolution. I don't know any specific name for it off hand - it's just the most standard cadence.


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## mikeh375

Isn't it remarkable how such a simple contrapuntal procedure can endure for hundreds of years and still be moving. I'm not sure there is a name for it either Edward, other than the dry description of the suspension itself as a 7-6 although my ears can't help but put the dominant in to make it a subliminal 4-3 at times. I do prefer the scrunchier maj7-6 though in early vocal music...gets me every time.


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## Guest

EdwardBast said:


> I don't have the notated music, but: It's a standard cadence formula in Dorian mode (These singers seem to be singing it a whole step higher than what I'm guessing is the notated pitch, putting the cadence on E instead of D?). I'm not sure I'm getting the notes on the right beats, but here is the cadence you singled out notated in Dorian mode:
> 
> View attachment 118578
> 
> 
> The reason it's ubiquitous is its simplicity and elegance. It was standard in this era to have cadences on perfect intervals, either an octave, as in this case, or an octave plus a fifth. The major 6th (E-C#) resolving outward to an octave we see in the Ockeghem example, is simply the most obvious and smoothest of the limited options available given the constraints of the then current principles of voice-leading and having to end on an octave. The suspension toward the end (the D sustained over the E) is what makes it elegant, by putting the voices rhythmically out of step and adding a bit of dissonance before the resolution. I don't know any specific name for it off hand - it's just the most standard cadence.


Yes, the singers are a tone higher than the Dorian pitch notated by EdwardBast.
I also didn't think there was a particular term for this ubiquitous cadential treatment, and a quick check in my old textbook (_Polyphonic Composition_, *Owen Swindale*, OUP 1962) confirms it.
To quote Swindale (p. 19): _[The] use of dissonant syncopations or suspensions may be observed at cadence points. These are [...] an invariable part of the [...] cadence._

And later (p. 42): _The cadence almost invariably makes use of a suspension; as Thomas Morley says, "There is no coming to a close without a discord, and that most commonly a seventh bound in with your sixth as your plainsong descendeth"_.


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## EdwardBast

Love the Morely quote. ^ ^ ^


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## Guest

^ ^ ^ Morley


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## Gallus

Thanks guys. Interesting stuff


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