The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plagal \Pla"gal\ (pl[=a]"gal), a. [F., from Gr. pla`gios sidewise, slanting.] (Mus.) Having a scale running from the dominant to its octave; -- said of certain old church modes or tunes, as opposed to those called authentic, which ran from the tonic to its octave.
Plagal cadence, a cadence in which the final chord on the tonic is preceded by the chord on the subdominant.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, from Medieval Latin plagalis, from plaga "the plagal mode," probably from plagius, from Medieval Greek plagius "plagal," in classical Greek "oblique," from plagos "side" (see plagio-).\n
Wiktionary
a. 1 (context music English) Designating a mode lying a perfect fourth below the authentic form. 2 (context music English) Designating a cadence in which the subdominant chord precedes the tonic.
WordNet
Usage examples of "plagal".
Cuivre, set the sea on fire, and the tourists gathered in twos and fours in the open-air plenos by the gulf to dine on fresh fruits and the specialty of the Plagal, sea harp broiled in its nest of feathery nettles.
Vielle perched on the flat plane of the broken and Fissured Plagal Plateau.
It had never occurred to him that a lowerstave Plagal field practitioner would dispute his diagnosis.
Pretty in a common sort of way, but the Plagal slur in her voice marked her as a hopeless lowerstave.
He would never get used to Porto Vielle, or any part of,the Plagal for that matter.
He found Plagal coinage confusing, another example of the chaos of Porto Vielle, he thought.
Since the modes overlap the moons by one, I could work with an ascending melodic pattern that would mutate through the modes, starting with C ionian in the plagal form.
The voice slowly faded, while the melody passed through sublime downward ripples of semitones to a plagal cadence.
I do not understand that the terminal notes of these plagal scales of St.
These enharmonic passages recur to satiety, and the abuse of the plagal cadence deprives it of its religious solemnity.
Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.