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Landini Cadence

A late-medieval cadential voice-leading pattern in which the upper voice descends to the note below its goal before leaping up a third, commonly inserting a fifth between an expanding sixth and final octave.

Version
v1 · 2026-09-28 · History
Domain-specific #
10303
Domain group
Arts & Aesthetic Practice
Origin domain
Music & Musicology
Subdomains
Medieval Music Theory, Counterpoint → Music & Musicology
Aliases
Landini Sixth, Landini Sixth Cadence, Under-Third Cadence

Core Idea

The Landini cadence is a voice-leading detour at a medieval close. The upper voice briefly moves below its expected goal and then leaps upward, enriching the standard outward motion from sixth to octave.

Its identity is contrapuntal and contextual rather than a standalone melodic cell. Analysts must identify the cadential final, voice pair, interval path, and rhythmic arrival inside the polyphonic texture.

Structural Signature

Sig role-phrases:

  • Penultimate contrapuntal sixth — Sets the conventional approach to the cadential octave. It is preparation. Counterfactual: Other interval contexts can produce similar melodies without this cadence.
  • Upper voice — Carries the under-third escape-tone motion. It is ornamented voice. Counterfactual: Reversing voice roles changes the named pattern.
  • Lower voice — Moves toward the final and supports interval expansion. It is foundation. Counterfactual: Its motion establishes the contrapuntal cadence.
  • Escape tone below the goal — Interrupts direct stepwise arrival and forms an intermediate fifth. It is differentia. Counterfactual: Without it the cadence is an ordinary sixth-to-octave close.
  • Final octave or unison — Supplies the structural arrival. It is cadential goal. Counterfactual: A similar figure away from closure may be melodic ornament only.
  • Rhythmic and modal context — Establish cadence location and voice-leading function. It is interpretive frame. Counterfactual: Pitch sequence alone can be ambiguous.

What It Is Not

  • Landini did not necessarily invent the pattern.
  • Any down-step/up-third melody is not the cadence.
  • It is not defined primarily by modern functional-chord labels.
  • Additional inner voices do not erase the two-voice skeleton.
  • Closest near-miss. The ordinary medieval cadence expands a sixth directly to an octave; the Landini pattern inserts the under-third escape tone before that final arrival.

Scope of Application

  • Medieval music analysis. Identifies cadential voice-leading in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century repertory.
  • Historical performance. Locates phrase articulation and contrapuntal goals.
  • Counterpoint pedagogy. Contrasts direct and embellished cadences.
  • Source study. Tracks naming, attribution, notation, and distribution.

Clarity

Report work and source, date, mode/final, voices, pitch spelling, interval sequence, rhythmic placement, ficta or editorial alterations, surrounding texture, cadential function, and whether 'Landini' denotes attribution or conventional name.

Manages Complexity

Three notes in one voice encode a relation among two or more voices, modal final, rhythm, editorial pitch choice, and historical style. Modern harmonic shorthand can obscure the original contrapuntal logic.

Abstract Reasoning

  1. Identify a genuine phrase-ending cadence and its final.
  2. Select the upper and lower voices carrying the main contrapuntal motion.
  3. Trace the preparation interval, inserted lower neighbor/escape tone, and final octave or unison.
  4. Check rhythm, notation, ficta, and inner voices.
  5. Use the historical name without turning it into an invention claim.

Knowledge Transfer

The contour can be quoted in later styles, but literal Landini-cadence classification requires the medieval cadential relation. Formal melodic resemblance alone carries only an analogy.

Examples

Canonical

At a phrase ending, the upper voice approaches its goal, dips one step to form a temporary fifth against the lower voice, then leaps a third upward as the voices arrive at the octave.

Mapped back: location → phrase cadence; preparation → sixth; ornament → under-third escape tone; intermediate → fifth; arrival → octave.

Applied / In Practice

A singer uses the same three-note contour mid-phrase over unrelated harmony; without cadential interval function it is not a Landini cadence.

Mapped back: melody → down then up third; location → mid-phrase; cadential goal → absent; verdict → melodic figure.

Structural Tensions

T1 — Named Attribution versus Historical Distribution. Landini used the figure consistently while surviving examples predate him and later composers continued it.

Diagnostic: Is the label being used analytically or as a claim of invention?

T2 — Two-Voice Schema versus Polyphonic Texture. The defining contrapuntal pair can be embedded inside additional voices that alter sonority.

Diagnostic: Which voices carry the cadential skeleton?

Structural–Framed Character

Landini Cadence is structural as an embellished sixth-to-octave voice-leading close and framed by late-medieval counterpoint.

Structural Core vs. Domain Accent

The broad pattern is delayed arrival through an escape tone. Medieval music adds modal finals, two-voice interval grammar, polyphony, notation, and historical naming.

  • Approved musical root. No graph parent entails this under-third cadential voice-leading schema.

  • Related — cadence, escape tone, double-leading-tone cadence, fauxbourdon, and contrapuntal sixth. They are the broader function, ornament, neighbors, and preparation.

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space

Landini Cadence sits in a moderately populated region (47th percentile for distinctiveness): it has near-neighbors but no dense thicket of look-alikes.

Family — Musical & Poetic Form (11 abstractions)

Nearest neighbors

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08

Not to Be Confused With

  • Deceptive cadence. Tell: Redirects expected harmonic closure under tonal syntax.
  • Direct medieval cadence. Tell: Moves from sixth to octave without the inserted under-third.
  • Escape tone. Tell: Is the general melodic ornament, not necessarily the full cadence.
  • Landini chord progression. Tell: Is a misleading chordal reduction of a contrapuntal pattern.

References

  • Frozen Wikipedia discovery revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landini_cadence (revision 1365949348).
  • Preserved source candidate: http://www.grovemusic.com/
  • Preserved source candidate: https://web.archive.org/web/20080516041031/http://www.grovemusic.com/
  • Preserved source candidate: http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/landini.html

The frozen Wikipedia revision is discovery provenance. The retained source set was reviewed for identity, formal or operational relation, and scope. The encyclopedia's structural synthesis is bounded to those claims; a thin authority surface is recorded as a nonblocking source-strengthening repair rather than concealed.