- Hi, you may well have
seen our earlier films
on three other cadences,
because we've already dealt
with the perfect cadence,
and then the plagal cadence,
and then the imperfect cadence.
And then the fourth of the four
most commonly used cadences
is the one we're going to
talk about in this film,
the interrupted cadence.
I spoke in earlier films
about the perfect cadence
and the plagal cadence being
kind of a musical full stops.
They finish on a chord I, on tonic chord,
and that takes you home to base.
So you feel as if you've really come
to the end of something.
It's a musical full stop.
It's quite emphatic.
We talked about the imperfect
cadence as a musical comma.
It kind of leaves you slightly in the air
because it finishes on chord V,
so it doesn't go back to that chord I.
But it's kind of leaving
you with the sense
of the music coming up for air,
but wanting to move on to another phrase
that maybe, in the next phrase,
takes you back home again.
Now this one, the interrupted cadence,
is what I like to call
a musical question mark.
It kind of brings you up for
air at the end of the phrase,
but sometimes also, just
slightly takes you by surprise.
Has the impact that a
question mark would have
on a sentence.
So, this is what we're talking about.
chord V, followed by chord VI.
If we're in the key of C major, well,
we're going to build
chords V and VI like this,
by saying,
what's the fifth note
of the scale of C major?
Well, C, D, E, F, G.
So there's G, what's the sixth note?
A, and what we do is build a triad.
So I take the G and I say,
what's the third note above it?
What's the fifth note above it?
I get G, B, D.
I do the same for A.
Here's the A.
What's the third note above it? C.
What's the fifth note above it? E.
A, C, E.
So that's chord V.
That's chord VI.
You may prefer to call those a chord of G
and a chord of A minor.
That's how it would work
out in the key of C major.
So if I want to have
an interrupted cadence,
I use chord V,
followed by chord VI.
Now you could already hear
that's a slight surprise.
If I have chord V,
followed by chord I,
which is what I have in a perfect cadence,
I've kind of gone home.
But if I do something with
an interrupted cadence
and I've got something like this say,
that last chord is not
really taking me home, is it?
It's just kind of lifted
the end of the phrase
and perhaps taken us very
slightly by surprise.
We're definitely going to need
something to come after it,
because we couldn't just
stop the piece there.
So, that's the interrupted cadence.
And, as I've said before
with cadence films,
you don't have to use these triads
just in bold form as they are.
You use the notes to make a chord.
So, a G, B, D chord, a chord V, a G chord,
I can do G, B, D, but I can
spread it out in some other way.
So I've got those notes being used.
But I'm listening to lots
of different formations
of the same chord.
It's all G, B, D,
but there are lots of different ways
in which you can present it.
So the art is to find a
way that works for you
on your particular instrument.
Same for chord VI.
There's the basic triad.
But I can have it like this,
or like this, or like this,
or like this, or like this,
or like this, or like this.
The possibilities are pretty endless.
As long as I'm using the right notes.
But as soon as I have a progression
at the end of a phrase that goes,
chord V followed by chord VI,
then what we've heard is
an interrupted cadence.
So here's V, VI.
Here's another version of it.
So you can hear, it's just
not taking me home, is it?
But it's still allowing me to come up
for a bit of air at the end of the phrase.
So I'll improvise a phrase now,
and I'll put an interrupted
cadence at the end of it
so you can hear it in a
kind of musical context.
So you can see, I couldn't
really stop there, could I?
I'd need to go on and have another phrase.
So I might need then to go,
and I've finished that next
phrase with a perfect cadence.
So you can hear the interrupted cadence
that does slightly kind
of interrupt the flow.
We can come up for musical breath.
We feel this kind of
musical question mark.
And then we go onto another phrase
that maybe does take us
home, through, for example,
a perfect cadence.
So that's how the
interrupted cadence works.
So if you're playing a piece of music,
you might want to go through it
and see if you can work
out what the cadences are
at the ends of phrases.
Then you're going to get some idea,
which are full stops,
which are commas, which
are question marks.
If you're a composer, you
might want to plan your piece
in such a way that you've got
a balance of these cadences.
If you've got a phrase that finishes
with an imperfect cadence
or an interrupted cadence,
you may want to have a
perfect or a plagal cadence
at the end of the following phrase
to kind of bring you back home again.
So, lots of implications,
whether you're a composer,
a performer, or just someone interested
in hearing and understanding
how this ticks.
So there's the fourth of our cadences,
the interrupted cadence.
