Harmonic Materials and the Cadential Organization of Leading Tones in Héctor Tosar’s Cinco madrigales para coro mixto

Abstract

This paper examines the cadential procedures in Cinco madrigales para coro mixto (1956) by Héctor Tosar, with the aim of investigating how formal closure is articulated in a harmonic ependo  alien to the ependo  functional tonality. The central hypothesis argues that, in this work, conclusiveness depends neither on dominant–tonic relations nor on the stabilization of a diatonic field, but rather on the contrapuntal articulation of semitonal displacements directed toward pitches belonging to the vertical sonorities that close each epen. The study begins by characterizing the harmonic material of the cycle, in which chords built in thirds, modal-resonance bichords, and quartal organizational structures coexist. Far from being integrated into a hierarchical functional system, these materials configure a language of flexible syntax, marked by the systematic omission of chords whose construction recalls those that, in the tonal tradition, fulfill a dominant function. Within this framework, the paper proposes a conceptual expansion of the notions of leading tone and cadence in order to describe mechanisms of directionality and closure in non-tonal or post-tonal repertoires. Based on a comprehensive survey of the work, twenty-two cadential situations are identified and classified according to the number of leading tones involved in each case. The analysis shows that cadential force does not ependo n the type of final verticality, but rather on the convergence of semitonal motions among the voices. Likewise, the recurrence of fourths, fifths, and their expansions supports the claim that these intervals play a particularly significant structural role in the musical organization of the work. It is concluded that Tosar reworks, within a twentieth-century chromatic language, a principle of directionality inherited from pre-tonal practices, in which intervallic resolution between pitches fulfills a central organizing function. Thus, closure in Cinco madrigales emerges locally from a network of contrapuntal tensions that articulates technical coherence, form, and expressive meaning.