Talk:Picardy third

Accidentals
I edited the explanation of the example at the end of the article. It said that the red natural sign replaced what could have been a flat sign, thus making the chord major; however, since the key signature includes a B flat, there would not have been an accidental in the case of a minor chord. Uttaddmb 19:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Kyrie
The Kyrie movement from Mozart's Requiem in D minor K626 ends with a fifth (D and A), there is neither a major nor a minor third, so I'm taking off the part about it. -FraKctured 15:05, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC) Must have got that from an edited edition, sorry! --Lambyuk 22:03, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No such thing as a "reverse" picardy third?
It may be exceedingly rare, but it does exist. See the ending of Mendelssohn's Characteristic Piece, opus 7 no. 7. The piece is in E Major, but ends with an utterly unexpected arpeggiated e minor chord.

Chopin's Nocturnes
Opus 27 no. 1 in c# minor, Opus 48 no. 2 in f# minor and Opus 72 no. 1 in e minor all end in extensive sections in major that cannot be called picardy thirds. Opus 55 no. 1 in f minor is a borderline case. (The two c minor nocturnes are the only minor ones not ending in major.)

38.117.238.82 04:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Use in church music
I had always believed that the use of Picardy thirds in church music was more to do with the reinforcement of the chord created by over/undertones in an organ using just intonation.....any views?

LacyK 21:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Parallel minor in Deceptive cadence? I think not...
It says in the article that a deceptive cadence is in the parallel minor. Either I'm misunderstanding what's being said, or this is wrong. A deceptive cadence may perhaps end on anything, but usually it is on the relative minor or subdominant, not the parallel minor (as far as I know). Plus, the following explanation in the article is of a A minor chord where a C major chord is expected. So I'm going to change the article to reflect this. Tix (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

"Sweet Child O' Mine"??
How is "Sweet Child O' Mine" an example of a Picardy third? The song is clearly in a major key and doesn't appear to end with a minor tonic. I will edit the page unless someone explains this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ubss347 (talk • contribs) 03:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Requested audio
I have added an audio example to the article. Hyacinth (talk) 05:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Open fifth as an "alternative" to Picardy third?
A paragraph in the introduction says that early composers such as Tallis employed open fifths as an alternative to Picardy thirds. This is historically misleading, as thirds were not considered in Western "art music" to be appropriate for the most stable cadences until the fifteenth century. There's more evidence for the Picardy third as an alternative to the open fifth than vice versa. --Atemperman (talk) 17:58, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Some sources, for curious souls:, ,. --Atemperman (talk) 18:19, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Two examples in contemporary popular music, these pieces are well-known.
Smells like teen spirit by Nirvana ends with vocal going ab-g-f and power chords (fifth + octave) Db->F (perceived minor due to the vocal's line. And after a few seconds, we hear a high "a" natural. Unforgiven II by Metallica ends with a major third as well (being in minor key).

Maybe one should add these to the article, it may attract some attention, since these songs are popular.

Bach itself is the best example of picardy third though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GrandBrand (talk • contribs) 20:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

History
The history section is good -- but I was once told that the term originally referred to a cathedral in Picardy with the unique acoustic property that the third of any minor triad, if allowed to reverberate, would quickly fade and be replaced by a major third. That's probably a myth -- I don't even know if it's physically possible -- but even so, perhaps it's worth mentioning and/or debunking. 24.238.113.229 (talk) 22:10, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Reverse Picardy Third
I moved the below here and added signatures, since it's a discussion. Hyacinth (talk) 07:53, 23 March 2010 (UTC) This is not true! The final dominant chord resolves first to a major tonic which is then 'coloured' into a minor tonic. The "reverse" Picardy third would be a solution of a final dominant chord in a major key resolved directly to an unexpected minor tonic. This is not the case in the example mentioned above. Anyway the Mendelssohn example is special! —Preceding comment added by 82.170.21.15 (talk)
 * The "reverse" Picardy third, where an expected major chord is replaced by its minor equivalent, is almost never used at the end of a work - an example of this rarity is in Mendelssohn's Characteristic Piece Op. 7 No. 7 in E.
 * It is not necessary for a Picardy third to be preceded by a dominant chord, though this the most common case. Other possibilities include a subdominant chord -- or a tonic minor chord, examples of which occur at the closes of Roland de Lassus's motet "Benedic, Domine, domum istam," Paganini's Caprice in G Minor for solo violin, Opus 24 No. 6, and Leoš Janáček's Capriccio for piano left hand and wind ensemble).  This is the precise equivalent of Mendelssohn's "reverse" Picardy third.  —Preceding comment added by Kostaki mou (talk • contribs)

Scientific Explanation
Does this even deserve to be here? It's mostly a misleading explanation of the harmonic series that adds nothing to the article. Honestly the only value I see in this is the laughs I got while reading it. The acoustic properties of a chords and their relationship to the harmonic series is worth discussion, but that is better reserved for articles relating to chords. If someone cannot explain to me why this should be here than I'm inclined to delete the section.Composerjude (talk) 05:18, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It may be possible for the aural effect of the Picardy third to be described scientifically - a major triad can be found in the 4th, 5th, and 6th harmonics of a major chord, while the minor triad can be found higher in the 10th, 12th, and 15th harmonics of its respective chord. (In the language of the harmonic series, this is equivalent to saying the major chord occupies a lower location in the harmonic series relative to the minor chord.) Moreover, minor triads correspond with sadness, angst, and tension, and are found in the undertone series. Major triads are natural harmonic series, and are, unlike minor triads, whose thirds are often intoned in sad or subdued speech, "happier" in their sound.
 * It's a muddled attempt to explain why it is easier for singers (and players of instruments whose pitches can be adjusted "on the fly") to accurately tune the third of a major triad than a minor one. It looks to me like the person who wrote it was thinking in terms of a keyboard instrument, where tuning is preset. The main thing that is missing is an explanation of combination tones, since it is their interaction with the overtones of the sung/played notes that is the crucial thing. I can't immediately think of a source for this, but I'm sure there has got to be one somewhere.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:42, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

The Song 'Daedalus' by Thrice
This song contains a picardy third at the end of the intro. The song is in the key of Am and contains the chords Am, Dm, F and G in the intro resolving, the final time, to an A chord. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.124.58.105 (talk) 19:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you have a source? Hyacinth (talk) 20:14, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Can't play examples
I normally use Safari. This is not exactly a freakish choice. It's the default web browser for Mac OS and it integrates with many other Mac OS features. I tried to hear the examples, but could not succeed. I tried to use the "help" links, but they were useless. I had to hunt around the internet for the explanation and remedy. There are two problems.

1-Safari cannot play Ogg files. Safari is highly compliant with HTML-5 standards. Ogg files are not HTML-5 compliant. You can hear the Ogg examples with other browsers, but not Safari. As other browsers increase their level of HTML-5 compliance, they will lose their ability to play Ogg files. Annoyingly, the help links say nothing about this. In addition, the help links point to plug-ins that are supposed to solve the problem, but they are obsolete and can't be installed.

2-Mac OS does a poor job of playing MIDI files. If they play at all, the volume is far too low and the sound is of poor quality. There is no plugin for Safari that makes it possible to play back MIDI files. It's possible to download and install Quicktime 7, but it doesn't work well. Some third party applications play MIDI files correctly. In Safari, that requires downloading the MIDI file, then opening them it in a third party application.

These problems likely exist in thousands of Wikipedia articles. They are annoying and user-hostile. I'm sure other users have brought them up in other forums

I was able to switch to another browser and hear the Ogg sound files. With another browser, I was prompted to choose the application I wanted to use to play the MIDI files. More trouble than it's worth.108.219.39.17 (talk) 19:08, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think HTML5 specifies what a browser should NOT support. Instead, it only specifies what a browser should support. Also, I can't see how HTML-5 standard doesn't include Ogg files, see HTML5_Audio. --Ahyangyi (talk) 15:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

"in this case G# rather than G♭"
This is surely a typo. G natural must be what is intended, not G flat. Kostaki mou (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That's what I thought at first (which is why I tagged the statement), but when I tried to look up the source online to verify or correct the error I was unable to access it online and determine whether the chord in question is on E or E♭. If it is the latter, then it is the G♯ that must be a mistake for G♮ (which is why I tagged this, also).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

According to Katherine Monk, the Picardy third in this song "suggests Mitchell is internally aware of romantic love's inability to provide true happiness".
Her logic escapes me. Kostaki mou (talk) 19:29, 22 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Finished the sentence. 14:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Picardy Third in Schubert
I was puzzled by Jerome’s ‘clarification required’ comments in relation to my contribution about Schubert. In response to his question ‘what has this to do with a Picardy Third?’ I would respond that the extract from the Winterreise song fulfils exactly the definition of Picardy Third given in the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article. To emphasise the point a little, I have added another clear example of Picardy Third in Schubert with an extract from his Piano Duet Fantasia in F minor, backed by a citation from Professor Wollenberg’s book “Schubert’s Fingerprints.”(Spencerpiers (talk) 09:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)).

History: original research?
The name section in History gives almost no sources and reads like a mixture of original research and pure opinion. Especially, the judgements about the likelihood of various sources in words or in geography read like pure opinion and are given almost no citations. Many of the opinions about words seem arbitrary. Just two examples: 'Not to be ignored is the existence of the proverb "ressembler le Picard"' and especially 'which would thus completely discredit the word picart': no reason, just a feeling by the writer. Zaslav (talk) 05:24, 12 August 2022 (UTC)