{ "query": "cadence", "count": 17, "count_indexed": 28, "results": [ { "slug": "cadences-and-phrase-endings", "title": "Cadences: How Phrases End in Tonal Music", "dek": "Authentic, half, plagal and deceptive cadences, and the real reason a close sounds strong: what happens in the bass, the top voice and the metre.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "cadence", "phrase structure", "tonality" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1260, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=cadences-and-phrase-endings", "excerpt": "Music has punctuation, and it is made of harmony. A phrase ends when the harmony, the bass, the metre and the melody all agree that something has finished. That agreement is a cadence, and its strength is not a matter of taste: it comes from four or five…", "score": 54, "partial": false, "snippet": "…all agree that something has finished. That agreement is a cadence, and its strength is not a matter of taste: it comes from four or five……" }, { "slug": "modulation-strategies", "title": "Modulation: How a Key Change Is Confirmed", "dek": "A modulation is not a chromatic chord; it is a new key confirmed by cadence. The routes into one, and how to read them off the page.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modulation", "pivot chord", "key relationships" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1510, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=modulation-strategies", "excerpt": "A piece that ends in G major and began in C major has modulated. The change of key is not a single event on one beat but a process spread over several, and the process has a rule: a key exists when its tonic has been confirmed by a cadence. Everything else…", "score": 36, "partial": false, "snippet": "…a rule: a key exists when its tonic has been confirmed by a cadence. Everything else……" }, { "slug": "rise-of-functional-tonality", "title": "The Rise of Functional Tonality: From Modes to Keys", "dek": "Around 1600 the bass became the foundation of harmony and the modal system narrowed to two keys. What changed in the documents, and what the change cost.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "tonality", "basso continuo", "modes" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1586, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/rise-of-functional-tonality/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/rise-of-functional-tonality.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=rise-of-functional-tonality", "excerpt": "A motet by Palestrina and a trio sonata by Corelli are separated by about a century, and the difference between them is not a matter of ornament. In the motet, harmony is what happens while four or five independent lines are doing something else. In the…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "A motet by Palestrina and a trio sonata by Corelli are separated by about a century, and the difference between them is not a matter of ornament. In the motet, harmony is what happens while four or…" }, { "slug": "sonata-form", "title": "Sonata Form: The Tonal Plot", "dek": "Sonata form is a tonal argument, not a set of labelled boxes. What matters is which key you are in, and how the music gets home again.", "topic": "form", "topic_name": "Form", "tags": [ "sonata form", "form", "tonality" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1683, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/sonata-form/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/sonata-form.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=sonata-form", "excerpt": "Ask someone to explain sonata form and you will get a diagram: exposition, development, recapitulation, with an optional introduction and coda, and a list of themes labelled first and second. The diagram is not wrong, but it describes the surface. What holds…", "score": 31, "partial": false, "snippet": "Ask someone to explain sonata form and you will get a diagram: exposition, development, recapitulation, with an optional introduction and coda, and a list of themes labelled first and second. The…" }, { "slug": "functional-harmony", "title": "Functional Harmony: Tonic, Predominant, Dominant", "dek": "Tonic, predominant and dominant describe what a chord does to a phrase rather than what it is. This is how the three harmonic jobs divide the work.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "chord function", "tonality", "harmonic analysis" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1280, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/functional-harmony/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/functional-harmony.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=functional-harmony", "excerpt": "A chord chart tells you which chords a piece uses. It does not tell you why the piece moves. The labels tonic, predominant and dominant answer the second question: they describe what a chord does to the phrase it sits in, not what notes it happens to contain…", "score": 30, "partial": false, "snippet": "A chord chart tells you which chords a piece uses. It does not tell you why the piece moves. The labels tonic, predominant and dominant answer the second question: they describe what a chord does to…" }, { "slug": "secondary-dominants", "title": "Secondary Dominants and How Tonicization Works", "dek": "A secondary dominant makes any chord a temporary tonic. How to spell one, where it turns up, and what cancels the effect.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "secondary dominant", "tonicization", "chromatic harmony" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1247, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/secondary-dominants/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/secondary-dominants.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=secondary-dominants", "excerpt": "In C major, a D major triad contains an F sharp. The key signature does not supply it and the chord is not an error. For as long as it sounds, the music treats G as a temporary tonic, and the D major triad is the dominant of that temporary tonic. Analysis…", "score": 30, "partial": false, "snippet": "In C major, a D major triad contains an F sharp. The key signature does not supply it and the chord is not an error. For as long as it sounds, the music treats G as a temporary tonic, and the D major…" }, { "slug": "borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "title": "Borrowed Chords: Modal Mixture in Practice", "dek": "Mixture borrows chords from the parallel mode. What the common borrowed chords do to a phrase, how they resolve, and where labelling fails.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modal mixture", "borrowed chords", "chromatic harmony" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1465, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "excerpt": "An F minor triad in C major requires an A flat, which the key signature does not give. Unlike a secondary dominant, the chord is not pointing at another key: F minor is the subdominant of C minor, and C minor is C major’s parallel mode. The tonic has not…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "An F minor triad in C major requires an A flat, which the key signature does not give. Unlike a secondary dominant, the chord is not pointing at another key: F minor is the subdominant of C minor…" }, { "slug": "first-species-counterpoint", "title": "First Species Counterpoint, Rule by Rule", "dek": "Species counterpoint isolates one compositional decision at a time. First species isolates the hardest one: how to make two voices sound like two voices.", "topic": "counterpoint", "topic_name": "Counterpoint", "tags": [ "species counterpoint", "voice leading", "two voices" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1647, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/first-species-counterpoint/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/first-species-counterpoint.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=first-species-counterpoint", "excerpt": "A cantus firmus is a tune with no accompaniment, eight to sixteen notes long, that moves mostly by step and comes to rest on its final. First species asks you to add exactly one note against each of those notes: two voices, both in whole notes, moving…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "A cantus firmus is a tune with no accompaniment, eight to sixteen notes long, that moves mostly by step and comes to rest on its final. First species asks you to add exactly one note against each of…" }, { "slug": "meter-and-hypermeter", "title": "Meter, Beat Hierarchy and Hypermeter in Performance", "dek": "Meter is a pattern of strong and weak positions, not a time signature: how it is built, how it stretches past the bar, and where performance contradicts it.", "topic": "rhythm", "topic_name": "Rhythm & Meter", "tags": [ "meter", "hypermeter", "phrase structure" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1430, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/meter-and-hypermeter/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/meter-and-hypermeter.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=meter-and-hypermeter", "excerpt": "Three words get used as if they meant the same thing in rehearsal: meter, time signature, beat. They are related and they are not the same, and the difference shows up exactly where the music becomes interesting, in syncopation, hemiola, and phrase endings…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "Three words get used as if they meant the same thing in rehearsal: meter, time signature, beat. They are related and they are not the same, and the difference shows up exactly where the music becomes…" }, { "slug": "romantic-chromaticism", "title": "Romantic Chromaticism and the Expanding Tonic", "dek": "Chromatic harmony widened a key without leaving it: the resources that do the work, the Tristan chord, and how to analyse it without over-labelling.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "chromaticism", "harmony", "nineteenth century" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1586, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/romantic-chromaticism/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/romantic-chromaticism.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=romantic-chromaticism", "excerpt": "Nineteenth-century harmony is usually described as chromatic, and the word hides the important part. A chromatic passage is not a passage that has left its key. It is a passage that has widened the key until it includes notes and chords the older vocabulary…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "Nineteenth-century harmony is usually described as chromatic, and the word hides the important part. A chromatic passage is not a passage that has left its key. It is a passage that has widened the…" }, { "slug": "voice-leading-in-four-parts", "title": "Voice Leading: Why the Rules Exist in Four-Part Writing", "dek": "Parallel fifths, tendency tones, spacing and doubling, read as solutions to one problem: keeping four lines heard as four lines.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "voice leading", "part writing", "counterpoint" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1340, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=voice-leading-in-four-parts", "excerpt": "Part-writing rules usually arrive as a list of prohibitions, which makes them feel arbitrary and easy to resent. They are neither. Almost all of them follow from a single aim: four voices that behave like four voices. Once you can hear what a broken rule does…", "score": 28, "partial": false, "snippet": "Part-writing rules usually arrive as a list of prohibitions, which makes them feel arbitrary and easy to resent. They are neither. Almost all of them follow from a single aim: four voices that behave…" }, { "slug": "ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation", "title": "From Ars Nova to the Renaissance: How Notation Changed Music", "dek": "Rhythm took two centuries longer than pitch to notate. Mensural notation solved it with ratios, and the Renaissance then replaced black ink with white.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "notation", "mensural notation", "renaissance" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1456, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=ars-nova-and-renaissance-notation", "excerpt": "A staff puts a note in pitch space, and position is cheap to draw. Duration is not a position but a relationship: a note is short only next to a longer one, and a page of polyphony has to state that relationship for every voice at once. European music had a…", "score": 27, "partial": false, "snippet": "A staff puts a note in pitch space, and position is cheap to draw. Duration is not a position but a relationship: a note is short only next to a longer one, and a page of polyphony has to state that…" }, { "slug": "figured-bass", "title": "Figured Bass: Reading Intervals Above the Bass Line", "dek": "Figures name intervals above the bass, not chords. What each shorthand means, how accidentals override the key, and what the player decides.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "figured bass", "basso continuo", "inversion" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1269, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=figured-bass", "excerpt": "A figured bass is a bass line with numerals underneath it, and the numerals are not chord symbols. Each one names an interval above the note it sits under, counted from that note. The player supplies the rest. Understanding what is written and what is…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "A figured bass is a bass line with numerals underneath it, and the numerals are not chord symbols. Each one names an interval above the note it sits under, counted from that note. The player supplies…" }, { "slug": "key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats", "title": "Key Signatures and the Order of Sharps and Flats", "dek": "Sharps arrive in the order F C G D A E B and flats in reverse. The order is the circle of fifths written out, one signature at a time.", "topic": "fundamentals", "topic_name": "Fundamentals", "tags": [ "key signatures", "notation", "circle of fifths" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1454, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=key-signatures-order-of-sharps-and-flats", "excerpt": "The accidentals in a key signature never appear in an arbitrary order. Sharps are added one at a time as F, C, G, D, A, E, B. Flats are added as B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Both lists are the circle of fifths spelled out, and the reason they are constant is that…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "The accidentals in a key signature never appear in an arbitrary order. Sharps are added one at a time as F, C, G, D, A, E, B. Flats are added as B, E, A, D, G, C, F. Both lists are the circle of…" }, { "slug": "meantone-and-well-temperament", "title": "Meantone and Well Temperament: Why Keys Used to Sound Different", "dek": "Quarter-comma meantone, the wolf fifth and the well temperaments in between: what keyboard tuning did to each key before equal temperament settled the argument.", "topic": "tuning", "topic_name": "Tuning & Temperament", "tags": [ "temperament", "tuning", "keyboard" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1598, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/meantone-and-well-temperament/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/meantone-and-well-temperament.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=meantone-and-well-temperament", "excerpt": "A modern keyboard hides its compromise. Every key is equally in tune, which also means every key is equally out of tune, and a major third in C major is exactly the same size as a major third in F sharp major. Before the nineteenth century the compromise was…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "A modern keyboard hides its compromise. Every key is equally in tune, which also means every key is equally out of tune, and a major third in C major is exactly the same size as a major third in F…" }, { "slug": "music-after-tonality", "title": "After Tonality: What Composers Replaced It With", "dek": "When chromatic harmony outgrew the tonal hierarchy, composers tried serial rules, rhythm, folk modes, and sound mass. What each method actually solved.", "topic": "history", "topic_name": "Music History", "tags": [ "atonality", "serialism", "modernism" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1399, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/music-after-tonality/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/music-after-tonality.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=music-after-tonality", "excerpt": "The tonal system was not abandoned because composers got bored of it. It was abandoned, in a handful of works written between roughly 1908 and 1923, because the chromatic language that had been built on top of it could no longer be explained by it. What…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "The tonal system was not abandoned because composers got bored of it. It was abandoned, in a handful of works written between roughly 1908 and 1923, because the chromatic language that had been built…" }, { "slug": "seventh-chords-and-resolution", "title": "Seventh Chords and How They Resolve in Tonal Harmony", "dek": "The chordal seventh falls, the leading tone rises, and the tritone at the centre of V7 resolves by step. What each diatonic seventh chord is for.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "seventh chords", "dominant seventh", "resolution" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1396, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=seventh-chords-and-resolution", "excerpt": "Adding a seventh to a triad changes what the chord is for. A triad can sit still; a seventh chord cannot, because the added note is a dissonance with a destination. That single fact explains the behaviour of every diatonic seventh chord in tonal music…", "score": 26, "partial": false, "snippet": "Adding a seventh to a triad changes what the chord is for. A triad can sit still; a seventh chord cannot, because the added note is a dissonance with a destination. That single fact explains the…" } ], "ranking": "title (12) > tags (6) > dek (5) > topic (3) > body frequency (max 6), +25 when every query token matches.", "html": "https://musics.name/search/?q=cadence", "generated_at": "2026-09-24T23:20:55+00:00" }