Teacher orientation
This week asks: How do independent melodic lines cooperate to create harmonic arrival? The three meetings move from shared experience to explicit theory and then transfer. Require students to predict before measuring or labeling; use performance and explanation together as evidence.
Any V–I is automatically a perfect authentic cadence; voice-leading rules are universal laws; chord spelling alone guarantees good parts.
Three-meeting sequence
Kinds of arrival
Identify authentic, half, plagal, and deceptive cadences
Pause recordings at phrase endings and rank closure strength.
Define cadence by harmonic motion and phrase context; distinguish PAC, IAC, HC, plagal, and deceptive types.
Cadence gallery: hear, label, perform, and alter endings to change closure.
What makes a PAC more conclusive than an IAC?
Identify cadences in an assigned score.
Tendency tones
Write leading-tone and chordal-seventh resolutions
Sustain scale degree 7 and sing its most expected resolution.
Teach leading tone up, chordal seventh down, and common-tone retention as style-specific defaults.
Students resolve V7–I in several voicings, sing each line, and diagnose unresolved tendency tones.
Where should the seventh of V7 usually move?
Write four V7–I resolutions.
Four melodies at once
Avoid parallel perfect intervals in chorale style
Compare block chords with the same harmony in smooth and awkward spacing.
Introduce contrary/oblique motion, range, spacing, doubling, and parallel fifth/octave checks.
Pairs realize a short soprano-bass framework, then exchange and audit with a checklist.
Name one revision that improved a single voice.
Revise a four-phrase chorale segment.
Student synthesis task
Claim–evidence–application: Students submit one notated or analytical artifact from the week, a 150–250 word explanation using at least four vocabulary terms, and a brief performance, recording, or demonstration. The explanation must identify a decision, cite musical evidence, and connect the idea to unfamiliar material.
Assessment and answer guidance
| Prompt | Value |
|---|---|
| 1. What defines a half cadence? | 2 points |
| 2. How does a deceptive cadence typically move? | 3 points |
| 3. Why avoid parallel fifths in common-practice chorale style? | 3 points |
| 4. Apply the week’s central idea to a new four-to-eight-measure example and explain the reasoning. | 7 points |
Teacher answer guidance
1. A phrase ending on dominant harmony.
2. V moves to vi in major or an analogous substitute rather than I.
3. They weaken the perceptual independence of voices in that style.
4. Award 2 points for accurate identification or construction, 2 for correct notation/terminology, 2 for evidence tied to the example, and 1 for a clear conclusion. Accept alternate solutions when the musical reasoning is defensible.
Access, differentiation, and extension
Support without lowering the target
Work first in two voices, then add alto and tenor. Preteach vocabulary, model one complete think-aloud, reduce the number of simultaneous variables, and allow a second attempt after feedback.
Extension
Compare common-practice voice leading with parallel motion in another style.
Evidence to retain
Keep the exit tickets, synthesis artifact, and scored application prompt. Together they show factual fluency, transfer, and the student’s ability to explain music—not only select an answer.