So, I am basically subdividing the Plagal Function into 3 categories in my Music Theory book and going over each individually in the section I've titled "The Fourth Function". Those are Plagal Cadences, Plagal Tags, and the Plagal ii. Plagal Cadences are at the ends of phrases and are usually either IV -> I(As I've seen occasionally in Bach chorales) or I -> IV64 -> IV64 -> I(As in Handel's Hallelujah Chorus) whereas the Plagal Tag is towards the beginning or middle of a phrase and always starts and ends with the tonic chord, but can have any inversion of the IV chord in between the tonic chords.
I have a few examples so far, these pieces to be exact:
- Ending of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus -> Plagal Cadence
- Bach Chorale no. 12 "Ein Kind geborn zu Bethlehem" -> Plagal Cadence
- Toccata and Fugue in D minor, also by Bach -> Plagal Cadence
- Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata Movement II -> Plagal Tag
- Chopin Nocturne in Ab Op. 32 no. 2 -> Plagal Tag
- Haydn's Piano Sonata no. 50 in D Movement I -> Plagal ii
However, it feels like I need a few more examples, especially of the Plagal ii. I know there's the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata no. 1 in C, with it's I -> ii6 -> I6 move at the start, but since I have already used that piece twice for triadic harmony and non-chord tones, I don't really feel like using it a third time for the Plagal ii examples.
And some Plagal Cadence examples outside of the Baroque wouldn't hurt either because although the Baroque and Renaissance is where I see the most usage of the Plagal Cadence, I'm sure it's been used occasionally by Classical and Romantic era composers and I just haven't found it yet. And it wouldn't hurt to have a couple more examples of the Plagal Tag either.
So, what other pieces should I include excerpts of to illustrate these 3 Plagal motions, the Plagal Cadence, Plagal Tag, and Plagal ii?
I’ve seen a handful of posts regarding the Vox YouTube video about Chrismassy music. I just think it’s funny… regardless.
In context they are referring to a Dm7b5 as the chord in question. What is the functional difference between using a ii7b5 vs. a minor plagal cadence? They both resolve to the same space. Is it as simple as the root is different?
I don’t have perfect pitch, but a trained ear. When I listen to the songs I hear them as minor plagal cadences, not as a ii7b5 chord…
Any insight would be great. Thanks.
A student asked me and I didn't know the answer. Can't even think of a piece of the top of my head that uses them
Just come across this term on [this site] (https://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/beatles-blog/it-must-be-high-or-low-ii-iv-i-in-beatles-songs), referring to a fairly common sequence in pop and rock: II-IV-I, all chords major, often preceded by the minor vi.
It looks to me like the II is a secondary dominant (V/V), but followed by IV instead of V, but still with the voice-leading going down 5-#4-4-3 (assuming I or vi7 in front).
Any erudite opinions on that specific interpretation, or other better (more conventional) ones?
SOLVED: American Pie - Don Mclean
Vocaroo clip: https://voca.ro/155iybSywh3C
I have been obsessing over this song so much to the point that my lack of finding it has led me to believe I just generated this song out of nowhere, or I’m confusing it for something else much simpler.
The album I think is a debut album of either the band or the artist who does this, and it’s definitely got the chorusy sound of sailors singing together, that rowdy sort of harmony, like guys in a bar. No sensational instrumentation, and I believe it’s acoustic, as might be the rest of the album. Has a end of the night kind of feeling, happy and like the perfect end to an introduction of whoever the artist was.
That song reminded me a bit of Cat Stevens, only slightly, maybe a bit like Michael Hurley’s acoustic stuff, and I’m faltering on whether or not the album was all acoustic or if there was some rock and pop going on throughout and that the final song was just this last hurrah before ending the album.
Definitely have to harp up the barroom/sailor type singing because it felt exactly like men who didn’t know how to sing still joining in chorus together and just having a good time, nothing too rowdy, but definitely a celebration type of feel, it was a relatively brief song I think.
I hope to get back into the bad or the artist as it was pretty good to hear, I just never thought much about listening to them again until about two months ago. I’m almost certain they came about and the album was from the 20th century, maybe 1970s, though I don’t know if it was an American group or artist or an English/Irish group or artist.
I think it might have been just vocals and an acoustic guitar, I know at the end it was definitely just those two elements, and I’m almost positive it ended with the guitar playing an F major - C major chord.
And how can I replicate the sound with sounding like every other ballad?
What can you add to your IV chord to make the resolution to I more satisfying? Similar to how you would turn your V into a V7 in which the tritone created between the third and the 7th gives so much tension that the resolution to the I is so satisfying.
Edit: Thanks to all your answers! You guys gave me lots of ideas and I will surely come back to this post in the future for my other projects.
I just want to look to some examples of how to use them. But when i try to find Plagal cadences and authentic imperfect cadences i could´nt find anything.
I honestly don't have a solid answer to the question, but I feel like I'm hearing minor iv chords in a bunch of songs lately. I hear it in indie or bedroom pop songs all the time (Rex Orange County really seems to like this sound). Do you think it's more popular now? What do you think about that?
In Music theory for Dummies (3rd Edition) it gives examples of plagal cadences. In one example it is meant to be showing an F chord going to a C. The chord that is meant to be C is voiced as C in the bass clef, then middle C, E and A. Surely this makes it an A minor/C chord instead of C. After playing it on my keyboard it certainly sounds minor and not like a plagal cadence.
Do you think this is a mistake on the publisher's part or am I missing something that makes this a C chord? It could be a C6, but then don't you need to have the fifth as well as the sixth for that? And for C13 you need the seventh, I think.
Sup fellow music nerds. So is this an actually recognized theoretical practice? I’ve always heard about stacking secondary dominant chords to get you back to tonic (i.e. E7, A7, D7 -> G for example), but I haven’t heard a lot about the application of other cadences to this concept. Secondary plagal cadences (if that’s even a term lol) sound pretty cool I’m discovering, and it gets used a lot in classic rock: The “na nana nahh” part of Hush by Deep Purple goes bVI, bIII, bVII, IV, then back to I, and it’s the best example I can think of. Thoughts? Is this obvious and I’ve just never thought that hard?
I'm a musician who just discovered the DS franchise in the last few weeks. The lore is so beautiful, but I love what Sakabura & Kitamura did with the score(s) particularly.
Despite there being no definitive "end times" in this game's cosmos, DS3's music is a fitting reflection of the final judgement inflicted on those who have shirked their duties when called on to relink the aeonian Flame. Two things strike me in particular about how the music reflects this: one simple and the other more complex.
On a simple level, the singing here (as the Firekeeper takes up her visor) in the introductory cinematic is clearly the first four notes of the Medieval "Dies Irae" funeral chant about the Last Judgement of the dead. I find it rather moving that this same hymn has these lines:
Tuba mirum spargens sonum,
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum.
The trumpet blares the awful sound,
echoing into the world's tombs,
summoning all to come before the Throne [of God].
Although it's a bell which awakens the Lords of Cinder and the Unkindled, the image of resurrection, thrones, and the conclusion of an age all come together well. I find it rather moving that this hymn is referenced, with such imagery abounding in the game.
More complex is the beauty of the main menu theme. Most drama in classical music is created by increasing tension (dissonance) and releasing it via harmonic resolution. Usually this is achieved by a lot of modulation to different keys, and liberal use of the harmonic progression i-v-i: ratcheting up tension and eventually returning home to the initial tonality.
By contrast, most of the functional harmony in the menu theme revolves around the chords i and iv, the minor mode tonic/home chord (E minor) and its subdominant chord (in this case, A minor). The undulating violins, epic choirs, vocal solos, and presence of extremely dissonant diminished chords obscure this, but beneath the epic flourish, this theme's harmonic world actually constitutes a lowering of tension, in musical terms, not an increase of it. It's like a sort of musical vertigo, spinning downwards, not ascending to triumph. This is incredibly fitting.
Incidentally, the (i-iv-i) plagal cadence is used when singing "Amen" at the end of many church hymns. Finality, yet inconclusiveness. A per
... keep reading on reddit ➡hi, i want to learn more about the plagal cadence. or "A-men". is there another version of this? maybe a II to I? any insight here? thank you!
I just discovered something pretty wild: the overture of Mozart's classic opera Don Giovanni ends on a plagal cadence. That being said, I'm sure most theorists wouldn't analyze it as a true plagal cadence because it acts more as an ornamental device to reaffirm the tonic. Interestingly, however, it's worth noting that there really is no classic example of an authentic cadence before it. The Quiescenza is implied before it (an I - V/IV - IV - vii° - I progression with scale degree 1 in the bass as a pedal tone under every chord). This is a fairly weak resolution, so a plagal reaffirmation of the tonic after it is highly unusual, especially in a major orchestral work like a Classical Period overture to a major opera.
Having trouble wrapping my head around these 2 possible explanations of the Napolitan chord function. It can be viewed as a IV as well as a V. Apparently we can also colour it as a Maj7 without losing its V function. Also, what would be a fast way to construct it so it can be included in my improvisation vocabulary?
/u/baseballfan3030 posted a question a few months ago asking if double plagals happen in classical music or if they are just a pop phenomenon. The answer was that it's mostly a pop phenomenon, and we couldn't find a classical example, although we are sure that it exists somewhere.
Well today I was reading Kopp's book, Chromatic Transformations in Nineteenth Century Music, as part of studying for my PhD exams. Kopp mentioned that Lewin in his article "Amfortas's Prayer to Titurel and the Role of D in Parsifal" identifies a sextuple-plagal motion in the finale of Parsifal, and I knew I had to bring it back to this subreddit to satisfy our collective curiosity!
A chordal reduction of the passage looks like this. Sorry it doesn't look prettier, and forgive my parallels! The plagal motions are mitigated with 5-6 motions, but the inclusion of added sixths are idiomatic for plagal cadences in late romantic music, so it's not a stretch at all to interpret it as plagal motion regardless.
Here is a recording on Youtube.
On this piano reduction (.pdf), you can find this passage beginning on the bottom staff of page 159.
Enjoy your sextuple plagals!
Edit: looking back over the original thread I see that /u/perpetual_motion had already mentioned this. I must not have seen it before. Anyway, hopefully this is interesting to some of you!
I thought it sounded cool. This method could be done to almost every song in a major key (preferably with a major I starting off its chord progression). I used Melodyne to edit the notes, but this one sounded great because I had the stems to the song and edited the stems separately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVIFzsrtO4
Without using negative harmony, is there a reason for the very warm, rich sound of a minor plagal cadence (iv-I) in terms of classical theory?
I'm interested in learning about more types of cadences to expand my options on how to end chord progressions and set up repeats or modulations. Obviously in CPP music there's just the four types that anyone cares about but in modern music there's many, many more. To provide a few examples:
- Minor Plagal Cadence (IV) - iv - I
- Backdoor Cadence iv - bVII - I
- Super Mario Cadence bVI - bVII - I
- Andalusian Cadence* i - bVII - bVI - V
*>!I'd argue that the Andalusian Cadence isn't really a cadence at all rather it's a full chord progression that tends to loop as is a la "Hit The Road, Jack" where a cadence would be the way a chord progression ENDS, but that's outside the scope of this discussion. It's called a cadence so it counts.!<
Is there a good resource with a ton of these? Otherwise, what are some of your individual favorites or some of the most notable examples?
I'm not sure if this has been asked or pointed out here before - I'm new to the forum (And a search didn't turn anything up, so don't even) - but surely some of us have noticed that pop/folk music uses the plagal cadence like western classical music used authentic cadences.
The "four chords to everything" - I V vi IV - is a good demonstration of this. The dominant is pretty much used to lead to predominant chords.
Provided that everyone accepts this observation, does anyone have a historical explanation for this change of harmonic taste?
In the key of C major, an F minor triad with a Db bass which resolves to the tonic. Would you interpret this as iv-I or a bII7-I?
Like (in C) Bb - F - C?
