I chose my recent piece, Mozart's minuet in F Major because it was an easy piece and I wanted to spend more time researching music theory and analysing the song form. I found a lot of useful information online which I have squeezed into this post and I hope to use this new information to analyse this piece and also to better analyse pieces in the future.
Here’s a C major scale. Each scale degree has a number, 1 through 8. So the first note of the scale is 1, the second note is 2, and so on.
So now let’s talk roman numerals. I’m going to find the first and 5th note of the scale, in this case C and G. You’ll see these scale degrees symbolized by their respective roman numerals – I and V. These scale degrees are SUPER important – possibly the most important – and they have names. The 1 is the tonic note, and the 5 is the dominant note.
It’s defined as “a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of resolution”. They’re composed of at least 2 notes or chords, and are extremely common in music from the Baroque and Classical eras (but still show up in pop music!).
Cadences are to music what periods are to punctuation. They create a close – an end of a section, a part, the end of a song. You can even hear cadences in modern music – listen to the last 5 seconds of a song, and you’ll often hear it move from the dominant to the tonic – even though they’re more obvious and specific in classical music, their musical function is so important that you’ll hear some form of cadence in most music.
The most common, most basic cadence is one that moves from V – I (5 – 1), from the dominant to the tonic. It sounds as though the music has come to an end. A perfect cadence is formed by the chords V - I.
Interrupted or Deceptive cadences:
are 'surprise' cadences. You think you're going to hear a perfect cadence, but you get a minor chord instead. Not really used at the end of a song in Classical music.
Sound unfinished, they sound as though they want to carry on to complete the music properly. An imperfect cadence ends on chord V. So with the perfect cadence, the chord progression moves from the dominant to the tonic, creating a sense of “ahh, completion”. With an imperfect cadence, it’s the opposite – it moves from the tonic to the dominant (I – V), creating a sense of incompleteness.
Sound finished, the sound isn’t quite as powerful as a perfect cadence, so you’ll never really see this at the very end of a piece (in Classical music, anyway). Plagal cadences are often used at the end of hymns and sung to A-men. A plagal cadence is formed by the chords IV - I) 4 - 1) instead of V - I.
