Leading tone

What it means

The leading tone is the seventh degree of a scale when it lies a semitone below the tonic. It carries its name because it leads to the tonic: the narrow distance creates a tension that demands resolution upward. The German designation “Leiterton” stands here with the same meaning alongside the more common form “Leitton.”

Musical use

The leading tone is the pivot of major-minor tonality. It belongs to the dominant (V) and there forms, together with the seventh, the tritone whose resolution carries the cadence: the leading tone rises to the tonic, the seventh falls to the third. Without it the cadence loses its goal — this is the reason why Mixolydian music, whose seventh degree lies a whole tone below the tonic, sounds more open and less goal-directed.

In minor the seventh degree is naturally a whole tone away. To obtain the leading tone, it is raised — this is the reason for the harmonic form of the minor scale and at the same time for the augmented second between the sixth and seventh degrees that arises there. The melodic form additionally raises the sixth degree to smooth out this step. In the notation this raising never appears in the key signature but always as an accidental.

Secondary dominants, too, form leading tones to other degrees; historically the practice reaches back to musica ficta, which introduced the leading tone into modal writing.

The leading tone acts as a melodic force: it strives a semitone upward to the tonic and makes cadences compelling. In minor it is absent in the natural form and is obtained by raising the seventh degree. Alongside the upward-striving leading tone there is a downward-striving one, for instance the minor sixth to the fifth, and altered leading tones in chromatic harmony. In voice-leading rules it holds that the leading tone is not doubled.

Performance practice

Lead the leading tone upward and give it direction without stressing it — it is tension, not goal. With variable intonation, bring it close to the tonic, distinctly higher than the piano plays it. And when resolving, take care that it does not break off: the goal note should sound like an arrival, not like a new beginning.