(Lat. finalis).
The concluding scale degree of any melody said to be in a Mode. In the church modes, the final note of a melody came to be regarded, together with its Ambitus, as one of the two required determinants of the mode of that melody. In the earliest stages of the mutual adaptation of the eight-mode system and the repertory of Gregorian chant, the final degree of a melody did not have this overwhelming hegemony. Mode was originally an aural convenience that helped to control the melodic connection of an antiphon or responsory with its verse, as well as being a theoretical system of classification. In the practical domain of aural tradition the final of an antiphon was not as important as its incipit, since it was by the pattern of the antiphon's beginning that the choice of its Difference, or manner of ending, was governed; but for responsories and their verses the final of the responsory did have a bearing on the verse. This is attested in passages from the tenth chapter of Aurelian's Musica disciplina (c840–50) and the second chapter of Regino's Epistola (c901) (see W. Apel: Gregorian Chant, Bloomington, IN, 1958, 3/1966/R, 174). The first treatise in which the final is the over-riding modal criterion is the anonymous Dialogus de musica of about 1000 (GerbertS, i, 257, trans. in StrunkSR2, ii).
In the modal theory of Hermannus Contractus and his followers, notably Wilhelm of Hirsau (d 1091), the term exitus cantilenae, ‘end of the melody’, was used (GerbertS, ii, 128 and 175; see also GerbertS, ii, 58), but unlike the term ‘final’ as it came to be understood, it had no connotation of structural governance, since in Hermannus's tetrachordal theory modality was conceived and analysed in terms of the melodic position of notes in the entire tone system rather than in terms of the hierarchy of tones within a melody.
The near synonymity of ‘final’ and Tonic has remained a pervasive notion in Western musical culture, although many scholars working in non-Western music, folk music and even early polyphony have begun to see this notion as a cultural assumption rather than an inherent connection.
HAROLD S. POWERS