Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Music Of or being a medieval mode having a range from the fourth below to the fifth above its final tone.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In Gregorian music, noting a mode or melody in which the final is in the middle of the compass instead of at the bottom: opposed to authentic. See mode
- In modern music, noting a cadence in which the chord of the tonic is preceded by that of the subdominant. See cadence.
Wiktionary
- adj. music Designating a mode lying a perfect fourth below the authentic form.
- adj. music Designating a cadence in which the subdominant chord precedes the tonic.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Mus.) Having a scale running from the dominant to its octave; -- said of certain old church modes or tunes, as opposed to those called
authentic , which ran from the tonic to its octave.
Etymologies
- From Late Latin plagalis, from Latin plaga, from plagius, from Byzantine Greek πλάγιος (plagios) ‘plagal’, Ancient Greek πλάγιος (plagios, "oblique"). (Wiktionary)
- Medieval Latin plagālis, from plaga, plagal mode, from plagius, plagal, from Medieval Greek plagios (ēkhos), plagal (mode), from Greek, oblique, from plagos, side; see plāk-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“_perfect plagal cadence_, the last two are _imperfect plagal_.”
“Final cadences often have short plagal extensions, with pedal notes normally occurring only at these places, often in the top voice.”
“These “irregularities” in the treatment of the mode do not, however, infringe the rules laid down by Tinctoris in his treatises: each voice respects its own modal unity but, in addition, the combination of the first and second modes in their irregular forms creates a mixture of authentic and plagal which Tinctoris as theoretician allows.”
“The Beatles incorporated classical elements into rock so seamlessly that it is easy to forget that string quartets and Bach-like countermelodies and bass lines (not to mention plagal cadences) did not always populate pop.”
“But they both heard the bittersweet longing within the plagal cadence, and chose their vocabularies accordingly.”
“You know who else used to stack his harmonies heavily towards the plagal, the flat side of the circle of fifths?”
“The subdominant, which we all know and love from plagal "Amen" cadences, colors much of gospel harmony.”
“The juxtaposed melodic phrases extend over an ambitus, or compass of the whole of the fifth and two tones of its plagal, or the sixth mode.”
“Thomas Riis is the Joseph Negler Professor of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and, as you'll have gathered, his is a scholar's approach -- heavy on the tonic pitches and plagal effects and ostinatos.”
“For future reference, the Phrygian mode has that distinctive minor 2nd, and should not be confused with the “Hypophrygian” plagal mode.”
Rambles at starchamber.com » Blog Archive » Music theory for the masses
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘plagal’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
-
Hymnody
troparion, idiomelon, theotokion, kontakion, contakion, sticheron, isodicon, eisodicon, catabasia, katabasia, hymnology, canon and 24 more...
-
The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
-
fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
-
Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
-
Evin290's Words
puerile, fastidious, blatherskite, folderol, femtosecond, redox, incarnadine, cerulean, genuflection, muslin, multitudinous, miasma and 517 more...
-
Music Words
Not all of them, obviously.
allegro, adagio, smorzando, fermata, plagal, ballade, scherzo, dolce, ritenuto, spiccato, sautille, cadenza and 17 more...
-
Archaic Musical Terminology
breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, demisemiquaver, hemidemisemiquaver, diapason, diatessaron, diapente, authentic and 8 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for plagal.
chained_bear "They talked about modes, agreeing that in general they preferred the Ambrosian to the plagal, and Wray said 'I was at one of their Masses the other day, when they sang the Mixolydian Agnus; and I must confess that the old gentleman's dona nobis pacem moved me almost to tears.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour, 59 Feb 15, 2008