A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Tierce de Picardie

TIERCE DE PICARDIE. In Polyphonic Music, it is essential that every Composition should end with a Major Third, even though the Third of the Mode in which it is written should be Minor. The Third, thus made Major by an Accidental Sharp or Natural, is called the 'Tierce de Picardie.' It is not very easy to arrive at the origin of the term; though it may perhaps be accounted for by the proximity of Picardy to Flanders, in which country the characteristic Interval was in common use, at a very early period. Rousseau's explanation of the term (Dictionnaire, 'Tierce') is a very strange one, viz. that it was given 'in joke, because the use of the interval on a final chord is an old one in church music, and therefore frequent in Picardy, where there is music in many cathedrals and other churches'!

[ W. S. R. ]