English cadence

The story

From English + cadence, coined due to its popularity with composers of the English Renaissance of the late 15th to the early 17th centuries.

First known use, by meaning

• from 20th c. A perfect cadence characteristic of English Renaissance music, involving a flattened seventh note played against the dominant chord (containing a regular raised seventh). Conventionally, the flattened seventh is played as part of a suspension on the penultimate beat, before resolving downwards to the sixth and then fifth of the final chord, while the raised seventh is held before resolving upward to the first; however, more complex variations are also possible.