A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Retardation

by Hubert Parry

RETARDATION is a word used by some theorists to distinguish a small group of discords which are similar in nature to suspensions, but resolve upwards, as in Ex. 1.

The ground for making this sub-class is that it appears inaccurate to describe as suspensions notes which are delayed or retarded in ascending. A comparison of Ex. 2, which would be distinguished as a suspension, with Ex. 1 will show the identity of principle which underlies the two discords; while the fact of their ascending or descending is clearly not an attribute but an accident. So in this case there is no other ostensible reason for breaking up a well-defined class but the fact that the common designation in use is supposed, perhaps erroneously, to be insufficient to denote all that ought to come under it. On the other hand it requires to be noted that as all discords of this class are discords of retardation, And as those which rise are very much less common than those which descend in resolution, the name which might describe the whole class is reserved for the smallest and least conspicuous group in that class.

[ C. H. H. P. ]