EN suspension theoryConcept core term Support my free tools
delayed resolution of a held note
What is it?
A suspension is a delayed voice: a note is held into a new sonority where it becomes dissonant, then resolves.
What does it do?
Hold a consonant note across the bar into the next sonority, where it lands as a dissonance, then let it fall a step into a chord tone. Three stages: preparation (the note arrives consonant, usually on a weak beat), suspension (it is tied or struck again on the strong beat, now dissonant), resolution (it steps down to consonance). Composers label them by the intervals above the bass: 4-3 and 7-6 are the workhorses, 9-8 a touch heavier, and 2-3 when it is the bass itself that suspends. This is the home territory of Fux's fourth species, where you write tied half-notes against a cantus firmus and earn the right to a dissonance only by resolving it. Bach's chorales are the place to watch a master chain them — a suspension in one voice setting up the next — and Palestrina built whole textures on the slow accumulation and release of these tensions. Practise the fourth-species version against the free cantus-firmus generator on this site.
A small, expected ache on the strong beat that releases as the note settles a step lower — the oldest tension-and-release gesture in polyphony. Chained across voices it gives the sense of a line constantly leaning forward and being caught.
In Fux-style species counterpoint, suspensions belong naturally to fourth species, where notes are tied across the cantus firmus and resolved after the dissonance.
In context
suspension: a consonant note prepared, held into the next sonority as a dissonance on the strong beat, then resolved down by step. Figured by intervals over the bass (4-3, 7-6, 9-8; 2-3 for a bass suspension). Native to Fux's fourth species; everywhere in Palestrina and the Bach chorales.
Equivalent terms
- DA suspension
- DE Vorhalt
- IT sospensione
- FR suspension