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Cadential voice leading is the culmination of a phrase's harmonic and linear motion, where voice-leading patterns create a sense of closure. In authentic cadences (V-I), the leading tone must resolve upward to the tonic, and the bass typically moves down a fifth. Plagal cadences (IV-I) create a different voice-leading effect with smooth motion that provides a softer sense of resolution.
Cadences are the punctuation of tonal music: they mark phrase endings, create moments of closure or suspension, and define the listener's sense of arrival. From your study of cadence types, you know the difference between authentic (V-I), plagal (IV-I), half (ending on V), and deceptive (V-vi) cadences. Cadential voice leading asks a more specific question: given a particular harmonic motion at a phrase ending, exactly how does each individual voice move? The answer reveals why certain cadences feel closed and final while others feel gentle or ambiguous — the closure is not just harmonic but linear.
In the authentic cadence, the governing voice-leading event is the resolution of the leading tone — the seventh scale degree — upward by semitone to the tonic. In a G major V chord in C major (G-B-D), the B is the leading tone; when this chord resolves to I, that B must rise to C. This is not merely convention — it reflects the acoustic and psychological pull of the semitone below the tonic. The leading tone is harmonically destabilized by its proximity to the tonic; the semitone resolution is almost mechanical in its inevitability. Any voice carrying the leading tone at the cadential moment must complete this upward resolution. If the leading tone is in an inner voice rather than the soprano, it still resolves upward, even if this means the tonic chord ends with a doubled third — this doubling is acceptable precisely because the leading tone's resolution is obligatory.
The bass motion in a perfect authentic cadence is a descending fifth (or ascending fourth) from the dominant to the tonic root. This bass motion combined with the leading tone resolution in an upper voice creates what is called the double resolution: the tonic is approached from below in the bass and from the semitone above in an inner or upper voice simultaneously. When the tonic also appears in the soprano at the point of arrival, the sense of closure is maximized — this is the perfect authentic cadence, the strongest phrase-ending in tonal music. Remove any one of these conditions (put a different note in the soprano, or use an imperfect bass approach) and the cadence weakens measurably.
The plagal cadence (IV-I) creates a fundamentally different character because IV does not contain the leading tone. The fourth scale degree (F in C major) moves down by step to the third of the tonic (E), and the sixth scale degree (A) typically moves either down to G or sustains as a common tone. There is no semitone pull, no urgency — instead, plagal resolution has a settled, hymnal quality. The motion from IV to I is harmonically stable rather than tonally directed, which is why plagal cadences so often appear *after* an authentic cadence, adding a final "amen" to a phrase that has already formally closed. Understanding both cadence types as voice-leading events — not just chord labels — lets you hear the specific linear motions that create each kind of closure and control them deliberately in your own writing.
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