Robert Gjerdingen calls a chromatically lowered sixth scale step in a major key (A♭ instead of A(♮) in C major, for instance) a hermaphrodite note, referring to Joseph Riepel (1709–1782), who seems to have associated major with masculine and minor with feminine. A hermaphrodite note is thus the sixth scale step borrowed from the parallel minor key yet using it in the parallel major (A♭ comes from C minor yet is used in C major, for instance). For Riepel himself, however, this term denotes the complete schema, not the individual note. When discussing the Fonte, he criticizes a version in which the major segment includes a chromatically lowered sixth scale step, calling that version “a wrong hermaphrodite” (“ein verkehrter Zwitter”), although “it pleases a hundred connoisseurs” (“Er gefällt hundert Kennern”; Riepel, 1755: 103).
See also The Fonte: The Basics.
Select Bibliography
Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Riepel, Joseph. Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst — II. Grundregeln zur Tonordnung (1755).