Comments on: Interesting Progression https://theholtsite.com/blog/3327/ Ben, Jill, and Alice Holt Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:17:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Ben Holt https://theholtsite.com/blog/3327/#comment-14779 Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:45:29 +0000 http://theholtsite.com/blog/?p=3327#comment-14779 That makes sense! Still, an Amen half cadence is really odd, and I stand by theory that Bach just had too much sugar in his tea or something that day.

]]> By: Dcn. Brench https://theholtsite.com/blog/3327/#comment-14778 Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:38:06 +0000 http://theholtsite.com/blog/?p=3327#comment-14778 I didn’t have time to think about it when you pointed it out to me yesterday, but now you’ve mentioned it again, I think the half cadence makes more sense than what would essentially be a sudden key change to E minor.

The reason is that if you follow the phrases of the hymn, it centers around the key of A minor more regularly than C major. Even just looking at the accidentals, they’re all sharps, where C major would be likely to have some B-flats.

So my guess is that the whole hymn is actually in A minor, which happens to end with a Deceptive Cadence in the relative major (probably for lyric-matching reasons). Then the Amen half cadence ending matches the same mysterious minor-to-major play that went on in the body of the melody.

Music theory is fun!

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