In tonal Western art music, then, a phrase is a span of music that ends with a cadence. Borrowing a term from linguistics, we refer to each of these smaller passages as a phrase. They divide this excerpt into three smaller passages. We refer to these momentary gestures of closure as cadences. We find rests at the end of each of these measures, but if the rests were omitted we would likely still hear these moments as conveying some sense of melodic and harmonic closure. The melody and harmonic progression are punctuated in three places, corresponding with punctuation marks in the text: m. The music in this excerpt does not flow unceasingly from beginning to end. 22.2 Tonic (T) and dominant (D) functions This chapter will introduce the two most prominent harmonic functions: the tonic function and the dominant function. Furthermore, these roles-or harmonic functions as we will call them-may be played by different chords with different musical effects.
(See Chapter 8 and Chapter 9.) But even within a single key, one chord may play different roles depending on the more immediate context. An A-minor chord, for example, will be heard as a vi chord in C major and as a iv chord in E minor. We have already discussed how a single chord may convey different musical meaning in different contexts. We will begin to discuss how a composition is structured over time and how certain musical features aid the listener in parsing their experience into manageable, meaningful parts.Īs we will soon see, these features are closely related to relationships heard between successive members of a harmonic progression. In this chapter, we will consider some of the similarities between listening to tonal Western art music and listening to speech. A comparison with spoken or written language, then, will be instructive, particularly since a number of music theory terms are borrowed from linguistics. Most composers, performers, and listeners agree that music conveys something-an idea, a story, an emotion-to the listener. Diatonic Polyphony and Functional HarmonyĢ2.
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