The Etymology of the ‘English’ Cadence

Abstract

ABSTRACT One thing above others is known widely about the so-called ‘English’ cadence: that it is not English. Ever since musicologists of the mid-twentieth century named it, the cadence has laboured under the guise of its deceptiveness. However, as argued in this article, the cadence has much to tell us about the musical culture of England at the end of the sixteeenth and into the seventeenth century, during which period it was popular. The ‘English’ cadence shines a light on the movement towards tonality, the twilight period of solmization, and the understanding of false relations. An etymology of the cadence, making use of etymology’s older, more playful, punning role as the rhetorical trope etymologia, demonstrates that (English or not), the cadence has much to tell us about this poignant period of English history.