Pedal (music)

See also: Pedal

In tonal harmony, a pedal is a note held with the one of the voices, foreign or not with various the agreements connected by the other voices during this behavior.

the pedal is downward bumblebees of the modal music and Polyphonie S primitives.

It must be real Note first and last agreement, and does not have to be foreign with more than two consecutive agreements. It is thus a foreign Note prepared and solved by movement obliques. It produces various Dissonance S while being added to the various real notes of the successive agreements which it crosses.

Generally, the note of the pedal is either the tonic (A) example, or the Dominante (example C). When these two degrees are heard simultaneously, one speaks about double pedal (B) example.

It can be in any part. When it is with the low , it is qualified lower pedal (it is used: b) example; when it is at the upper part, it is qualified higher pedal (A) example; when it is in an intermediate part, it is qualified pedal médiaire (example C).

Throughout lower pedal, the part immediately above this pedal (the tenor, for example) becomes the true low one.

Seule the lower pedal can be quantified: one quantifies then the part of Ténor. The agreements of eleventh and thirteenth tonic however, could be quantified on the low one. The higher pedals and médiaires are never quantified.

It is recommended to prevent that a part joins the note of the pedal by oblique movement and Demi-ton.

Examples of pedals:

The pedal has various functions: it is used to stabilize the movement or, on the contrary, to create tension. According to the context, it is used for forcing the harmonic Mouvement, or framing it. At Beethoven, it often resembles a dam being used to contain the musical flood; when the dam is broken, one with the impression of a tidal wave. In other type-setters (in particular at the time modern), it is used like a color.

At the 18th century, the pedal almost always has the function of an articulation within the form: for example at the end of the first prelude of the quite moderate keyboard of Bach. In the same way, the introduction to the first movement of the symphonies of Haydn often ends in a long pedal of dominant which creates at the listener a feeling of waiting, suspense solved by the merry or heroic arrival of the topic allegro.

In the Prelude for Lute BWV 999, Bach is even more radical: it defines very clearly by the play of the notes pedals, beyond the mobility of the harmonic sequences, three great zones of stability which are as many tension fields in its composition. There is minor C (tonic), D (dominant of dominant - zone of higher tension with its decreased agreements) and finally ground which one feels like a resolution, but which finishes actually the piece without concluding it, by a suspensive half-cadence.

See too

Internal bonds

Simple: Pedal not

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