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A Picardy third, (; ) also known as a Picardy cadence or Tierce de Picardie, is a major chord of the tonic at the end of a musical Musical form that is either musical mode or in a minor scale. This is achieved by raising the third of the expected Minor chord by a semitone to create a Major chord, as a form of resolution.Percy Scholes (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Music: Self-indexed and with a Pronouncing Glossary and Over 1,100 Portraits and Pictures, ninth edition, completely revised and reset and with many additions to text and illustrations (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 1027–28.
For example, instead of a cadence ending on an A minor chord containing the notes A, C, and E, a Picardy third ending would consist of an A major chord containing the notes A, C, and E. The minor third between the A and C of the A minor chord has become a major third in the Picardy third chord. Philosopher Peter Kivy writes:
According to Deryck Cooke, "Western composers, expressing the 'rightness' of happiness by means of a major third, expressed the 'wrongness' of grief by means of the minor third, and for centuries, pieces in a minor key had to have a 'happy ending' – a final major chord (the 'tierce de Picardie') or a bare fifth."Deryck Cooke, The Language of Music (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 57.
As a harmony device, the Picardy third originated in Western music in the Renaissance era.
Listen to the final four measures of "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" with () and without () Picardy third (harmony by R. Vaughan Williams).Denise LaGiglia and Anna Belle O'Shea, The Liturgical Flutist: A Method Book and More (Chicago, Illinois: GIA Publications, 2005), p. 166. .
/ref>Don Michael Randel (ed.), The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press, 2003), p. 660. . Rousseau argues that “the practice remained longer in Church Music, and, consequently, in Picardy, where there is music in a lot of cathedrals and churches,” and “the term is used jokingly by musicians”, suggesting it might have never had an academic basis, a tangible origin, and might have sprung out of idiomatic jokes in France in the first half of the 18th century.
Robert Hall hypothesizes that, instead of deriving from the Picardy, it comes from the Old French word "picart", meaning "pointed" or "sharp" in northern dialects, and thus refers to the musical sharp that transforms the minor third of the chord into a major third.Robert A. Hall, Jr., "How Picard was the Picardy Third?", Current Musicology 19 (1975): pp. 78–80.
The few Old French dictionaries in which the word picart (fem. picarde) appears give “ aigu, piquant” as a definition. While piquant is quite straightforward—meaning spiky, pointy, sharp— aigu is much more ambiguous, because it has the inconvenience of having at least three meanings: “high-pitched/treble”, “sharp” as in a sharp blade, and “acute”. Considering the definitions also state the term can refer to a nail (" clou") (read masonry nail), a pike or a spit, it seems aigu might be there used to mean "pointy" / “sharp”. However, not “sharp” in the desired sense, the one relating to a raised pitch, but in the sense of a sharp blade, which would thus completely discredit the word picart as the origin for the Picardy third, which also seems unlikely considering the possibility that aigu was also used to refer to a high(er)-pitched note, and a treble sound, thus perfectly explaining the use of the word picarde to designate a chord whose third is higher than it should be.
Not to be ignored is the existence of the proverb " ressembler le Picard" ("to resemble an inhabitant of Picard") which meant “ éviter le danger” (to avoid danger). This would link back to the humorous character of the term, that would have thus been used to mock supposedly cowardly composers who used the Picardy third as a way to avoid the gravity of the minor third, and perhaps the backlash they would have faced from the academic elite and the Church by going against the time’s scholasticism.
Ultimately, the origin of the name "tierce picarde" will likely never be known for sure, but what evidence there is seems to point towards these idiomatic jokes and proverbs as well as the literal meaning of picarde as high-pitched and treble.
In his book Music and Sentiment, Charles Rosen shows how Bach makes use of the fluctuations between minor and major to convey feeling in his music. Rosen singles out the Allemande from the keyboard Partita No. 1 in B-flat, BWV 825, to exemplify "the range of expression then possible, the subtle variety of inflections of sentiment contained with a well-defined framework". The following passage from the first half of the piece starts in F major, but then, in bar 15, "Turning to the minor mode with a chromatic bass and then back to the major for the cadence adds still new intensity."Charles Rosen, Music and Sentiment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 45.
Many passages in Bach's religious works follow a similar expressive trajectory involving major and minor keys that may sometimes take on a symbolic significance. For example, David Humphreys (1983, p. 23) sees the "languishing chromatic inflections, syncopations and appoggiaturas" of the following episode from the St Anne Prelude for organ, BWV 552 from Clavier-Übung III as "showing Christ in his human aspect. Moreover the poignant angularity of the melody, and in particular the sudden turn to the minor, are obvious expressions of pathos, introduced as a portrayal of his Passion and crucifixion":Humphreys, D. (1983). The Esoteric structure of Bach's Clavierübung III, p. 25. University of Cardiff Press.
Notably, Bach's two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier, composed in 1722 and 1744 respectively, differ considerably in their application of Picardy thirds, which occur unambiguously at the end of all of the minor-mode preludes and all but one of the minor-mode fugues in the first book.Butler, H. Joseph. " Emulation and Inspiration: J. S. Bach's Transcriptions from Vivaldi's L'estro armonico " (2011), p. 21. In the second book, however, fourteen of the minor-mode movements end on a minor chord, or occasionally, on a unison. Oxford Companion to Music, tenth edition, edited by Percy A. Scholes and John Owen Ward (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Manuscripts vary in many of these cases.
While the device was used less frequently during the Classical era, examples can be found in works by Joseph Haydn and Mozart, such as the slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto 21, K. 467:
Philip Radcliffe says that the dissonant harmonies here "have a vivid foretaste of Schumann and the way they gently melt into the major key is equally prophetic of Schubert".Radcliffe, P. (1978). Mozart Piano Concertos, p. 52. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. At the end of his opera Don Giovanni, Mozart uses the switch from minor to major to considerable dramatic effect: "As the Don disappears, screaming in agony, the orchestra settles in on a chord of D major. The change of mode offers no consolation, though: it is more like the tierce de Picardie, the 'Picardy third' (a famous misnomer derived from tierce picarte, 'sharp third'), the major chord that was used to end solemn organ preludes and toccatas in the minor keys in days of old."Richard Taruskin (2010). The Oxford History of Western Music: Music in the seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, p. 494. Oxford University Press.
The fierce C minor drama that pervades the Allegro con brio ed appassionato movement from Beethoven's last Piano Sonata, Op. 111, dissipates as the prevailing tonality turns to the major in its closing bars "in conjunction with a concluding diminuendo to end the movement, somewhat unexpectedly, on a note of alleviation or relief".Taruskin, R. (2010). The Oxford History of Western Music: Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, p. 730. Oxford University Press.
The switch from minor to major was a device used frequently and to great expressive effect by Franz Schubert in both his songs and instrumental works. In his book on the song cycle Winterreise, singer Ian Bostridge speaks of the "quintessentially Schubertian effect in the final verse" of the opening song "Gute Nacht", "as the key shifts magically from minor to major".Ian Bostridge (2015). Schubert's Winter Journey, p. 7 London: Faber and Faber. Susan Wollenberg describes how the first movement of Schubert's Fantasia in F minor for piano four-hands, D 940, "ends in an extended Tierce de Picardie".Wollenberg, S. (2011). Schubert's Fingerprints: Studies in the Instrumental Works, p. 42. London, Routledge. The subtle change from minor to major occurs in the bass at the beginning of bar 103:
In the Romantic music era, those of Chopin's that are in a minor key almost always end with a Picardy third. A notable structural employment of this device occurs with the finale of the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, where the motto theme makes its first appearance in the major mode.
The guitar part is played in Em with a capo on the 4th fret, so the song sounds in the key of G minor.
Accessed 29 January 2019.
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