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prettygoodwordI knew we just had a theme week, but I just happened to have a bunch of words in a row that all started with P, and that's as good a reason to have a P-week. (No micturition jokes as that doesn't start with P or urine trouble.)
plagal (PLAY-guhl) - adj., (music) designating a mode that starts a perfect fourth below the authentic form; designating a cadence in which the subdominant chord, which has a root a perfect fourth above the root of the tonic, precedes the tonic.
The first of these is talking about various ways you can walk a scale up the octave -- most modes start the scale on the tonic note, but plagal modes start three notes down, which is called a fourth because in music, counting starts with one, not zero (or to put it another way, intervals are inclusive). That topic, however, is somewhat recondite and is most important to medieval church music. The second is more common today: a change of chord within a key from the fourth/subdominant to the tonic, often written in shorthand IV - I, as opposed to the most common resolution from the fifth/dominant to tonic (V - I). One example is the common cadence for "amen" in Christian hymns. The word was taken in the 1590s from Medieval Latin plagālis, from plaga, plagal mode, from plagius, plagal, from Medieval Greek plagios (ēkhos), plagal (mode), from Greek, oblique, from plagos, side.
(I like plagal cadences.)
---L.
plagal (PLAY-guhl) - adj., (music) designating a mode that starts a perfect fourth below the authentic form; designating a cadence in which the subdominant chord, which has a root a perfect fourth above the root of the tonic, precedes the tonic.
The first of these is talking about various ways you can walk a scale up the octave -- most modes start the scale on the tonic note, but plagal modes start three notes down, which is called a fourth because in music, counting starts with one, not zero (or to put it another way, intervals are inclusive). That topic, however, is somewhat recondite and is most important to medieval church music. The second is more common today: a change of chord within a key from the fourth/subdominant to the tonic, often written in shorthand IV - I, as opposed to the most common resolution from the fifth/dominant to tonic (V - I). One example is the common cadence for "amen" in Christian hymns. The word was taken in the 1590s from Medieval Latin plagālis, from plaga, plagal mode, from plagius, plagal, from Medieval Greek plagios (ēkhos), plagal (mode), from Greek, oblique, from plagos, side.
(I like plagal cadences.)
---L.
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Date: 2022-06-27 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-27 08:52 pm (UTC)