The leading tone is scale degree 7 of a major key — the pitch a semitone below the tonic — and the bearer of the leading function: the point of strongest upward pull, whose half-step resolution to the tonic is the sharpest edge of cadential motion and the voice-leading engine that completes the dominant's pull home. Parameters: (1) intervallic status — in a major key the seventh scale degree sits a semitone (diatonic semitone) below the tonic (in C major, B), and it is this half-step distance that gives it its leading character; the corresponding degree in a natural minor key is a subtonic, a whole tone below the tonic, and does not bear the leading function; (2) functional role — the leading tone is the degree that resolves upward by semitone to the tonic; it appears in the dominant chord as its third (B in a G major triad over C) and supplies the voice-leading urgency that makes the dominant–tonic cadence close; (3) relational definition — the leading tone is defined relative to the tonic (the leading tone of C major is B), and its function is the completion of the dominant's resolution, so it is the dominant's pull expressed at the voice-leading level. Persistence mechanism: codified in Western tonal and voice-leading theory, taught in harmony and counterpoint curricula (scale-degree analysis; the leading-tone–tonic resolution as a basic voice-leading pattern), reproduced in composition and analysis practice (cadence analysis, the leading tone's semitone pull in the final cadence of a phrase), and maintained through the conventions of tonal notation (the raised seventh in minor keys, the harmonic minor, exists to produce the leading tone). It is distinguished from the subtonic (the natural-minor seventh degree, a whole tone below the tonic — same scale position, no half-step, no leading function), from the dominant (the chord/degree to which the leading tone belongs and which it sharpens — the leading tone is the third of the dominant chord, its semitone voice, not the fifth-degree function itself), and from a bare pitch (any point on the pitch axis; the leading tone is a pitch bearing the specific function of the semitone pull to the tonic). [formal: dominantis | substrate: mind | horizon: centuries | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
leading-tone
The leading tone is scale degree 7 of a major key — the pitch a semitone below the tonic — and the bearer of the leading function: the point of strongest upward pull, whose half-step resolution to the tonic is the sharpest edge of cadentia…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made musical construct: scale degree 7 of a major key — the pitch a semitone below the tonic bearing the leading function, whose half-step resolution up to the tonic is the sharpest voice-leading edge of cadential motion. Built to persist in Western tonal and voice-leading practice as the dominant's pull expressed at the level of individual voices.
Names and aliases
- leading-toneen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- tonicDEPENDS_ON →
Law 8b removal test, grounded in the source's own defined sense: the leading-tone is carved as 'scale degree 7 of a major key — the pitch a semitone below the tonic — the bearer of the leading function, whose half-step resolution to the tonic is the sharpest edge of cadential motion'. Every parameter is defined relationally to the tonic: its intervallic status is 'a semitone below the tonic', its function is 'resolution up to the tonic', and its leading character is precisely that half-step pull to that point. Remove the tonic construct now and the leading-tone stops operating as a leading tone: the half-step has no target, the upward resolution has nowhere to land, and the degree collapses to the bare seventh degree of a scale position — a scale degree, not a leading tone. Not a sayability claim: the leading-tone's identity (B as the leading tone of C) is fixed by the tonic, and voice-leading analysis — the mechanism by which the leading tone persists — names it by its semitone relation to the tonic. Pinned sense (Law 11d): leading-tone as the functional seventh degree per the source's definition. Deliberately NOT a DEPENDS_ON the dominant: the dominant chord is the leading tone's primary harmonic site (it is the chord's third), but the degree's intervallic status and its semitone pull to the tonic operate in the scale without the chord construct — the removal test on the dominant fails, so no edge is filed.
- scale-degreeINSTANCE_OF →
The leading-tone is a specific kind of scale-degree: the seventh ordinal slot of a major scale, functionally designated by its semitone resolution to the tonic. The source's accepted definition carves it as 'scale degree 7 of a major key — the pitch a semitone below the tonic — and the bearer of the leading function' — a scale-degree with its ordinal fixed at 7 and its function named. scale-degree is the NEAREST accepted kind (Law 11e): no intermediate rung exists on the map; musical-scale is the container of degrees, not a kind; tonic is the degree's relational anchor, not its kind. A competent speaker calls the leading tone 'a scale degree — the seventh in major'. Specific to general (Law 9); pinned sense (Law 11d): the functional seventh degree per the source's own definition.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Sep 26, 2026, 12:04 AM UTC
- Content hash
- 7962cd7c306393f8969c9514f2ff4b1c8941ed3f2c373848b4b2c47c8b58bb49