The Ponte

Riepel’s “bridge”: the harmony stands on the dominant and waits — a prolongation of 5̂, often gathering the seventh as it goes, spanning the gap between one section and the next. Nothing progresses; that is the point. The Ponte converts the dominant’s tension into suspense, and its release into the tonic is the arrival the bridge was built to deliver.

Use the Ponte where the form needs a held breath: before a reprise, between a half close and the theme’s return, anywhere the listener should feel the next section being prepared rather than reached. Its length is expressive — a bar of dominant is a comma, four bars a drumroll — and its craft is in keeping the upper voices alive over the standing bass so the wait accumulates rather than stalls.

• Moving the bass off the dominant mid-bridge, which turns a prolongation into an ordinary progression.
• Letting the upper voices freeze with the bass, so the bridge stalls instead of building.
• Resolving the gathered seventh upward at the release.
• Bridging so long that the arrival cannot repay the wait.

• Joseph Riepel, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, vol. II (Grundregeln zur Tonordnung insgemein) (1755), Grundregeln zur Tonordnung: the Ponte — Riepel names the standing-dominant span and its bridging function.