# Cadence

Source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/cadence

**A cadence is the harmonic formula that ends a musical phrase, functioning like punctuation to signal a full stop, a comma, or a surprise.**

The four standard types are the authentic cadence, dominant to tonic, which sounds conclusive; the plagal cadence, subdominant to tonic, the "amen" ending; the half cadence, which stops on the dominant and sounds unfinished; and the deceptive cadence, where the dominant resolves somewhere other than the tonic, usually the submediant.

Recognising cadences is what turns a page of notes into phrases, and phrases are what a listener actually hears. For a performer this is directly practical: knowing where a phrase closes tells you where to relax the bow, where to breathe with the ensemble, and where not to.

Canonical source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/cadence