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Short Progressions
As its name suggests, the Phrygian cadence actually originates in modal music from before the common practice era with which this site is concerned. In the modern tonal system the perfect cadence is the standard way of ending a piece of music. In modal music, final closure was defined by a particular voice-leading pattern as much as by a succession of chords. One of the most common pattern in a two-part texture was for the upper voice to rise and the lower voice to fall onto the final of the mode that the piece was in, as shown in the examples below. This pattern of a sixth moving to an octave is different in each mode. In the Ionian mode - the precursor of the major scale - the two-part, and three-part cadences are very similar to the modern perfect cadence - the only real difference is the position of the notes in the chord. The Phrygian mode, however, begins with a semitone so the pattern is rather different. Its tonal equivalent is iv6 - V in a minor key and this cadence has survived in tonal music in this form.
As can be seen in the examples below, the phrygian cadence is an imperfect cadence onto the dominant, which sounds more closed than the more common imperfect cadence from I to V.
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