Glossary

A term coined by Robert O. Gjerdingen, after several 18th-century sources. A Comma is a synonym for a clausula cantizans or a ⑦–① cadence. Its usual melody is a ➎–➍–➌ or ➍–➌ snippet. See also Clausulæ. See also Long Comma. See also Corelli Long Comma. Select Bibliography Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style […]

An octave displacement is a register switch in which a melodic line is continued an octave higher or lower than expected after a note on a strong beat, often because of a tessitura issue. Example a illustrates how two octave displacements in the upper part of bar 2 ensure that the first and last pitch

A Jommelli is a variant of a clausula cantizans (also called a ⑦–① cadence or, in Gjerdingen’s term, a Comma (Gjerdingen (2007), p. 155–157)). While ⑦ of a clausula cantizans is usually realized as a sixth chord or 6/5 chord in a variable number of parts, ⑦ of a Jommelli is set in a three-part

Horizontalizing the dissonance means that, instead of writing or playing an on-beat vertical dissonance, both notes of that interval occur successively in one voice.

A hermaphrodite note is a chromatically lowered sixth scale step in a major key (A♭ instead of A in C major, for instance). Joseph Riepel (1709–1782) seems to have associated major with masculine, minor with feminine. When discussing the Fonte, he criticizes a version in which the major segment includes a chromatically lowered sixth scale

In the second volume of his monumental Phrynis (Mytilenæus) Oder Satyrischer Componist (1677), Wolfgang Caspar Printz (1641–1717) gives the following definition: “Figura Suspirans is nothing other / than a Figura Corta, which instead of the front long note / has a pause half as long and a note equal to the other two.” “Figura suspirans

In the second volume of his monumental Phrynis (Mytilenæus) Oder Satyrischer Componist (1677), Wolfgang Caspar Printz (1641–1717) gives the following definition: “Figura Corta consists of three fast notes / of which one is as long as the other two combined.” “Figura Corta besteht aus dreyen geschwinden Noten / deren doch ein so lang ist /

Clausula cantizans = ⑦–① cadence Clausula altizans = ⑤/④–③ cadence Clausula tenorizans = ②–① cadence Clausula basizans (or bassizans) = ⑤–① cadence Treatises up to and including the first half of the 18th century mostly considered cadences from a melodic and polyphonic point of view. Instead of seeing a cadence in terms of a chord

A Neapolitan sixth chord is a chord on ④ with a minor third and a minor sixth. It typically occurs in minor, although you may occasionally encounter it in major as well. In both modes, the sixth doesn’t belong to the scale but is a chromatically lowered version of ➋, giving its specific flavour to

Gjerdingen argues that “the fluid mixing and matching of schemata would seem to exemplify perfectly the ars combinatoria [or ‘art of combinations’] … this was a philosophical tradition cited by Riepel and other eighteenth-century musicians” (Gjerdingen, 2007: 99 & 115). Select Bibliography Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press,