# Examples of daring dissonances in an era where they weren't common



## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

The purpose of this topic is primarily to pay tribute this wonderful and woefully short section in the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica
5:48






But what else is there?

(Side note: the ending of Mozart's musical joke is another option, but it was meant as a joke so I disqualify it from being truly "daring")


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

level82rat said:


> (Side note: the ending of Mozart's musical joke is another option, but it was meant as a joke so I disqualify it from being truly "daring")


"Look at Idomeneo. Not only is it a marvel, but as Mozart was still quite young and brash when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing. What marvelous dissonance! What harmony!" -Brahms, 1896

[ 26:00 ~ 32:30 ] "Tutte nel cor vi sento"
[ 1:23:30 ~ 1:28:30 ] "Qual nuovo terrore"
[ 2:01:00 ~ 2:06:00 ] "O voto tremendo"

7:05 , 11:15 , 15:35


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Franz Xaver Richter (1709~1789) - Kemptener Te Deum in D-major (1742):




Richter is a rather peculiar member of the Mannheim school who shows a lot of "learned-ness" in his work.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

level82rat said:


> The purpose of this topic is primarily to pay tribute this wonderful and woefully short section in the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica


I've heard more extreme dissonances in Beethoven, but I can't cite them. This one just sounds like a major seventh chord with the seventh against the upper root. That "leading tone" clash occurs frequently in older music, like Mozart, where it's a V chord cadence with that root sustained on top, as in G7-C.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Oops, sorry the links aren't embedded, for some reason on mobile the video feature acts goofy for me.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I think that the tone cluster in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth is quite remarkable and unusual. And the chromatic tone cluster in the first movement of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto may be the first in history according to this site.



level82rat said:


> The purpose of this topic is primarily to pay tribute this wonderful and woefully short section in the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica
> 5:48


I remember being quite shocked by this dissonance when I first heard it. I was just entering the world of classical music and had never heard something like that. It was a dazzling experience.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Holst was ahead of his time...have a listen to these beauties from 12'25" till about 13' 20". This section for me contains some of the most sensuous and expressive music he wrote


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> That "leading tone" clash occurs frequently in older music, like Mozart, where it's a V chord cadence with that root sustained on top, as in G7-C.


I'm not sure what examples you have in mind, but I find the "major 7th" dissonances (among other things) in this striking
ex. 0:07 , 1:59 , 3:14


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> This one just sounds like a major seventh chord with the seventh against the upper root.


Close but it deserves more credit than that. It starts with B-Gb-A-C-Eb before resolving to B7


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I included this piece in a post a few days ago:

Biber's Battaglia. In the second movement, titled _Die liederliche gesellschaft von allerley Humor_ ("The lusty society of all types of humor"), Biber uses a number of German, Slovak, and Czech folk songs in different keys simultaneously to depict a group of drunken solders singing. Seventeenth century polytonality:


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

Haydn70 said:


> I included this piece in a post a few days ago:
> 
> Biber's Battaglia. In the second movement, titled _Die liederliche gesellschaft von allerley Humor_ ("The lusty society of all types of humor"), Biber uses a number of German, Slovak, and Czech folk songs in different keys simultaneously to depict a group of drunken solders singing. Seventeenth century polytonality:


That's more of a sound effect than music, but I'm shocked how well it implies drunken sailors singing. Very interesting share


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Les Élémens (1737) by Jean-Féry Rebel. This piece opens with an extremely dissonant chord.

He wrote a detailed explanation of this section for the published edition, here excerpted:

"The introduction to this Symphony was drawn from nature: it was Chaos itself, that confusion which reigned among the Elements before the moment when, subject to immutable laws, they assumed their prescribed places within the natural order.

I have availed myself of some widely accepted conventions to depict each particular element of this confusion.

The bass expresses Earth by tied notes which are played in a shaking fashion. The flutes, with their rising and falling lines, imitate the flow and murmur of Water. Air is depicted by long-held notes followed by resolutions on the small flutes. Finally, the violins, with their lively, brilliant passages, represent the nimbleness of Fire.

These characteristics may be recognized, separate or intermingled, in whole or in part, in the various reprises that I have called Chaos, and which mark the efforts of the Elements to separate from each other. At the seventh appearance of Chaos these efforts diminish as order begins to assert itself.

This initial idea led me further. I have dared to link the idea of the confusion of the Elements with that of confusion in Harmony. I have risked opening with all the notes sounding together, or rather, all the notes in an octave played as a single sound."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

level82rat said:


> Close but it deserves more credit than that. It starts with B-Gb-A-C-Eb before resolving to B7


Sorry, I don't follow. Aren't you talking about this part of the score only? 








https://imslp.simssa.ca/files/imgln...eethoven_-_Symphony_No.3_-_Singer.pdf#page=13


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Maybe you're talking about the subsequent passages? ( 



 [ 5:54 ~ 5:59 ] ) Looking at the time-stamp you set in the link in your OP, I thought you meant only the climactic "A-F-C-E" chords in forte (maybe this is what MR thought too).


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> Sorry, I don't follow. Aren't you talking about this part of the score only?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I got the wrong enharmonics, it should be F# and D#. Look at the right hand side of the score here


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## level82rat (Jun 20, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> Maybe you're talking about the subsequent passages? (
> 
> 
> 
> [ 5:54 ~ 5:59 ] ) Looking at the time-stamp you set in the link in your OP, I thought you meant only the climactic "A-F-C-E" chords in forte (maybe this is what MR thought too).


Correct. But the build-up to that section has some notable dissonance as well


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

hammeredklavier said:


> I'm not sure what examples you have in mind, but I find the "major 7th" dissonances (among other things) in this striking
> ex. 0:07 , 1:59 , 3:14


Yeah, those minor seconds at the first are really spicy! I have a harder time hearing the later ones. I slowed it down 50% in the "settings," and you can really hear it good.

Here's another one from Mozart. Listen from 2:00-2:17.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

I know Gesualdo a bit of a cliche at this point, and there's lots of discourse about how his dissonance isn't _that_ much more extreme than his contemporaries', but I do feel obligated to link this just in case anyone still thinks 19th and 20th century WAM have a monopoly on sustained and intense exploration of extreme dissonance as a compositional tool:






EDIT: the above was published in 1614 or thereabouts, but likely written closer to 1600, and his previous books of madrigals published in the 1590s are almost as extreme.



Haydn70 said:


> Les Élémens (1737) by Jean-Féry Rebel. This piece opens with an extremely dissonant chord.


This and the Biber you posted are wonderful! I had no idea!


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