The anticipation

A voice sounds its next tone early, on the weak part of the beat, before the harmony it belongs to arrives. The anticipation is the suspension’s mirror: the suspension holds the past against the present, the anticipation borrows the future — and it is at home above cadences, where the ear already knows what is coming and the early tonic sharpens rather than confuses the arrival.

The anticipation belongs almost exclusively to the close: a melody touching its final tonic a beat early, against a harmony still on the dominant, makes the arrival feel confirmed rather than announced. It softens a cadence’s last rhythmic step — the early tone absorbs the momentum, so the final chord reads as settling into place rather than landing abruptly. Because it borrows a tone already expected, it carries none of a suspension’s risk: no preparation, no resolution to police, only brief friction against the old harmony.

• Placing the anticipation somewhere other than the approach to a close, where the listener has no cadence to expect and the early tone reads as a mistake.
• Sounding the anticipated tone on a strong beat instead of the weak part of the beat, which gives it more weight than the arrival it is only supposed to preview.
• Anticipating too early — a full beat or more ahead of the arrival — which stretches the device past the point where the ear still hears it as a preview.
• Anticipating a tone that is already consonant against the harmony still sounding, so there is no friction to resolve and the gesture does nothing.

• Ebenezer Prout, Harmony: Its Theory and Practice (1889), The chapter on auxiliary notes and anticipations — The classroom account: the tone of the coming chord sounded against the going one, unaccented.
• Johann Sebastian Bach, The four-part chorales (1750), Cadential anticipations in the soprano, passim — The repertoire’s standard close: the soprano tonic touched an eighth early over the dominant.