The Picardy Third? It's been around since the Renaissance...

Whatever the lineage it usually strikes me as inartistic,

Tell that to JS Bach, Telemann and others. The Picardy 3rd is quite common. I suppose if I had 3 hymns right together and they all ended on the Picardy, it might get old but i regularly do it.

Its not un-artfully. Its common. Spend some time listening to Bach organ works. A great example is BWV 538 of JS Bach, the Dorian Toccata and Fugue in D minor. The toccata ends on the D major cadence. Your ear might grow a little in listening to these things.

From an old and grumpy organist. I played the piece in question a couple of weeks ago.

My organist is kind of fixated on doing this with recessional hymns.

Then maybe just pick major hymns for the recessional?

@Marc Cerisier

Ending O Come Emmanuel that way "because it's Gaudete Sunday" is exactly the type of thing my organist would do, and I would have been highly disgruntled for about 3 minutes after. Congratulations are in order for coming up with an absolutely perfect example of this. No offense meant, I'm sure you're a great musician with excellent taste, but I can't stand it.

It's a very standard practice, and has been since whenever. When a choir is singing SATB on the concluding verse, the singers should be made aware of it - or directed to simply omit the third. (FWIW, despite the standard rules of composition, in a warm acoustic I rather enjoy the third being omitted and letting the acoustic and listeners discern the third ... there were hymns in the past where I've had directors direct such.)

I would love to agree that it's just a matter of taste and leave it there, and I'm not denying that it can be done more or less tastefully. But to take up the Veni example again, changing the final chord to major "because it's Gaudete Sunday" (which captures the oddly extrinsic thinking behind this to perfection), is to my mind so wrongheaded that I sense there must be some quite interesting (to me, anyway) difference of symbolic cognition behind it that could be brought out if I spent time with it.

In my very limited musical experience (20 yrs. as cathedral musician), Gaudete Sunday is marked by a more joyful atmosphere throughout the liturgy—and who doesn't love rose vestments? Don't worry Chant_Supremacist, there will be no altered thirds this coming Sunday!

Astonishingly enough, every parish I've ever visited handles music just a touch differently, so it appears that within the uniformity of our rite, there might just be room for different interpretations to coexist. I would hesitate to call wrong a practice well embraced in common practice music myself, though.

TCJ—oddly enough, I tend to omit the 3rd entirely on the last chord of Picardy.

I get it, many organists are fond of doing this thing at least sometimes. You want the option, let's say. It does halfway answer my question of what's going on with my mischievous organist: it's not just him, you're all crazy!

It is certainly possible to make a picardy third sound dorky. The remedy for dorkiness is good taste. I wish you well in your efforts in this regard.

Since a picardy third is sometimes applied in performance when not explicitly notated, it is arguably a type of ornamentation. That makes it hard to condemn the practice outright.

But really, if you are going to apply any type of ornamentation, sound judgement requires that doing so must fit in with the overall scheme. I don't think that is a hard argument to make.

It should also be easy for anyone to think of examples of composers where any use of certain ornamentation is inappropriate.

So, each case requires due thought.

By the time you get to common-practice hymnody, and particularly Victorian hymnody, final major chords seem really willful. Would one apply a trill to the penultimate note of such a hymn? If you're doing old German chorales, it's much more at home. And for vocal polyphony, it's been regarded as de rigeur.

One element of taste (not so much in hymnody as in polyphony) is to sharpen the structural cadence as opposed to "the last note." It's fairly common for superius and tenor to make their cadence but then there's a "tag ending" where the altus and bassus keep things going. A notorious example is Ludwig Senfl's In Maien, where sharping only the last chord misplaces the climax, so to speak, and sounds "dorky",

A similar issue happens in harmonizations of chant hymns where people don't take modality into consideration. I HATE versions of "Creator of the Stars of Night" that end on a Do chord instead of a Mi chord.

When an organist forces a cheap happy ending onto a penitential Lenten hymn such as "Ah, Holy Jesus" (HERZLIEBSTER JESU), it contradicts the gravity of the text.

Although I don't view it as a happy ending, J.S. Bach's setting of Herzliebster Jesu in the St Matthew Passion ends with a Picardy third. In fact, I find it quite moving.

https://youtu.be/xSDcgoXBiE4?si=DtJNiPN4hkrKk05X

https://hymnary.org/hymn/NEH1985/page/146

I'm late to this discussion, but I will attest that this was an absolutely normal harmonic practice starting in the sixteenth century. For earlier examples of minor endings, it is interesting to note that Josquin often sets the ending counterpoint in a way that makes the Picardy third impossible, such as having the third enter while another voice is singing the flat sixth. But it's quite usual by the Palestrina generation; if there is a third on the final chord, it is probably a major third. In continuo playing in the seventeenth century, starting with the earliest Italian sources, it was normal to play a major chord not just at the end of the piece but at the end of every phrase. The early continuo treatises are very clear on this point (Bianciardi, Agazzari, etc.). In accompanying music of Monteverdi/Castello etc., I always teach students this and it sounds wrong without it. It becomes less obligatory the later you go, so we don't do it in French opera from the high baroque. Later on, it's definitely a matter of taste, which is how it is in modern hymn playing.

It is possible to get very metaphysical about this: the major harmony has been seen in many times and places as more perfect than the minor, since the arrangement M3-below-m3 is the harmonic division of the fifth, just as the arrangement 5th-below-4th is the harmonic division of the octave. In this way of thinking, it is obligatory to end a piece with the more perfect harmony because attaining perfection is part of what makes a cadence satisfying.

In terms of "out of nowhere", the Picardy third has nothing on the harmonic era practice of a final cadence shift or key shift of a final iteration to the chromatic mediant. (E.g., if you're in C major, a final shift to E major.) Famous examples: the last part of the Maestoso of Saint-Seans' Organ Symphony and Ravel's Bolero.

A similar issue happens in harmonizations of chant hymns where people don't take modality into consideration. I HATE versions of "Creator of the Stars of Night" that end on a Do chord instead of a Mi chord.

Yeah. I sometimes have to think about what the scale is (not the key signature: mode 7, with my preference for A=Re in that mode, means one sharp is misleading, as the C is simply natural without writing it in all the time). Then the good news is that the final chord is the easiest to write in. Double the final note, add the major/minor triad as appropriate.

There is a chain of perfection that is mathematically consistent and has to do with the simplicity of the ratios: unison > octave > octave and fifth > major triad > minor triad > other sonorities like ending on a harmony with the added sixth, seventh, etc.

It's actually hard to justify a lot of what we teach in music theory, but one way to do so is to rely on the numerical ratios (string lengths or frequencies as you like) involved. I don't have a strong opinion about veni Emmanuel (I have probably played this major at some time in my life but I never plan that kind of thing ahead), but I did want to point out that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this line of thinking led to Picardy endings at the end of practically every phrase of music.

Your point about it coming out of nowhere in hymn playing is interesting. I think if one ends major there can also be other things leading up to this in terms of tempo manipulation and reharmonization that make this feel more natural.

@Charles_Weaver

There is a chain of perfection that is mathematically consistent and has to do with the simplicity of the ratios: unison > octave > octave and fifth > major triad > minor triad > other sonorities like ending on a harmony with the added sixth, seventh, etc. [...]

I did want to point out that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this line of thinking led to Picardy endings at the end of practically every phrase of music.

In those centuries we might have been dealing with a metaphysical theory, but I think today the underlying rationale is less metaphysical and more (1) a misunderstanding of minor tonality and compression of its ethos as merely "sad" rather than tender, pious, interior; and (2) a discomfort with this perceived "sadness," and with "negative" emotion in general, with the idea that allowing it to linger, of not subverting its musical communication at a piece's end, is vaguely "unhealthy." A subconscious intrusion of pop psychology, in other words, rather than an elaborate music of the spheres theory.

The Picardy third can be effective when used sparingly. I usually avoid it in chant accompaniments, but it can add a bright quality to the conclusion of a minor-key hymn here and there. "Llangloffan" comes to mind. So that makes two of us grumpy organists who support it. (Thanks, kevinj!)

I'm reading far too much between the lines when you say "mischievous", then.

Just wait until he concludes a major hymn on a minor chord.

surely CONDITOR 'in C' has to have a G sharp in the final chord

Surely? If the preceding phrase has V/vi, the G# is a strong contender. But a Phrygian cadence at the end is totally satisfying to me.

The Picardy third rubs me the wrong way too. When an organist forces a cheap happy ending onto a penitential Lenten hymn such as "Ah, Holy Jesus" (HERZLIEBSTER JESU), it contradicts the gravity of the text.

15. And when, dear Lord, before Thy throne in heaven
To me the crown of joy at last is given,
Where sweetest hymns Thy saints forever raise Thee,
I, too, shall praise Thee.

I also hear major in the context of overall minor as even sadder and more affecting. It’s not like the major chord suddenly cheers me up. It’s a very striking color change that to me seems to add to the pathos of the piece.

It goes from sad to heartbreaking.

Particularly when the text takes an upward turn as in the example above.

And of course, in the context of various temperaments and intonations, the ability to have a major chord more perfectly in tune is a kind of music of the spheres move for the ending, adding to the gravity via finality and satisfaction rather than the emotional content. E.g. - on my organ, F major has a just third, and the C major triad is just, so in those keys I’m almost always going to end on the major chord.

Also spicy is just ending on an open fifth.

Br Bachmann told me that open fifths are one of the variations in a chant accompaniment that he will use.

And if I am adding harmony from the pew on a final cadence, I normally aim for the fifth, not the third, because a delayed resolution of an unwritten suspension (from Fa or Re) is more likely than fussing with the fifth. In a resonant acoustic, there's a glory in a pure fifth.