Cadence: A Study of Closure in Tonal Music

Cadence is a comprehensive examination of how formal units in European art music of the tonal era achieve closure. The book brings together the author’s decades-long investigations into cadence, a compositional device that is readily experienced both by musicians and non-musicians, but one that has proven intractable to clear and precise theoretical formulation. Rooted in Caplin’s broader theory of formal functions, the book first develops concepts of cadence for music of the high classical style and then extends these ideas to gauge cadential practice in earlier and later style periods. Throughout the study, various manifestations of cadence are defined in terms of their morphology (their harmonic and melodic profiles) as well as their function (the specific formal contexts in which they are deployed).
Cadence introduces a host of theoretical concepts illustrated by copious musical examples, all of which contain extensive analytical annotations of harmony, melody and form. Though the book is addressed primarily to music theorists, the many issues of compositional practice raised in this study will resonate with the interests of composers, historians, and performers alike.

Following graduate studies at the University of Chicago and the Technical University of Berlin, William Caplin joined the Faculty of Music at McGill University in 1978 and remained there until his retirement in 2022. Caplin specializes in the theory of musical form and the history of harmonic and metric theories. His ground-breaking treatise Classical Form (1998) won the Wallace Berry Book Award from the Society for Music Theory. He subsequently served that society as both Vice-President and President. In 2011, Caplin was awarded the prestigious Killam Research Fellowship and was elected a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada in 2015.