# For the love of dissonant music



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

THIS IS THE THREAD

where we embrace DISSONANCE in music of all kinds.

For example, the constructive dissonant music of Elliott Carter here turned supple to set some poems of Elizabeth Bishop.


----------



## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Yes. As much as I love consonance.

Seriously, I think it depends on the context. Dissonance alone don't make a musical piece better or worse in my opinion; the expressive and structural reasons for it's usage do. I may hate or love dissonance depending on how, when, where and why it's being used.


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Sometimes "dissonance" is just a different non-Western scale.


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Allerius said:


> Seriously, I think it depends on the context. Dissonance alone don't make a musical piece better or worse in my opinion; the expressive and structural reasons for it's usage do. I may hate or love dissonance depending on how, when, where and why it's being used.


Since dissonance itself is an element of all music and its ebs and flows, a spectrum more than a category, you can have music that sounds much more dissonant than others, but within the piece, there lies its own series of tension and release at the right times. I guess this thread is talking about either (a) works themselves that sound more dissonant than others, or (b) the use of dissonance that sounds unlike a majority of common harmonic developments. If it were talking about (c) the tensive contrasts within every piece, I'm sure everyone might have something to say.


----------



## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

There was a time, not that long ago, that I loved dissonance for the sake of it, which was probably an overreaction to hating it before. I think I still have a high tolerance for it, but it comes down to what the music is saying and how well it's used.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The heterophony created by overblowing in traditional Japanese flute music is the sort of dissonance I like most


----------



## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I didn’t realize it was multiple choice until after I chose, but my answer is yes and no. Context and moderation are key. “Dissonance is like salt. Too little and the food is bland, too much and it spoils the dish.” - Prokofiev


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

In music, yes. In life, no.


----------



## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

In music - in small doses when correctly done for effect

In life - no. But I must confess that sometimes it is the only way we learn.


----------



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

If there were no dissonance in music, that would be very limiting.


----------



## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

The reasonable purpose of dissonance is to enhance other sounds. On its own, it is just unpleasant.


----------



## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)




----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

One definition of "dissonance" is "lack of harmony among musical notes." Of course, this definition depends upon what one means by "harmony", and definitions that depend upon other definitions get definitely indefinate.

Another definition of "dissonance" is "a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements." Pouring oil into water is, I suppose, dissonant, though it may sound to my ears rather lovely.

My point here remains that we must agree on a definition of "dissonance" in order to coherently communicate ideas about the concept, or else we are just producing dissonance!

To clarify: I hear no dissonance (as I define dissonance) in the Elliott Carter piece which opens this thread. The music composed by Carter seems fitting and viable, and according to the supplied score the production of the sounds produced by the players matches that written on the score. In some sense, one can only have a dissonance in a piece of composed music if one violates the instructions of the score. For instance, if one inserts a C# for the eighth tone of the famous opening in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, one has produced a dissonance. Yet, that same C# works beautifully as the opening note of the same composer's _Moonlight _Sonata which would be terribly marred with a substituted D as the opening note of that piano work.

What our ears discern as dissonant may well depend upon what musical tradition we are raised in. I suspect that much of that Eastern music which Westerners hear as dissonant is not dissonant at all to ears brought up in the tradition of that sound. If serial-styled 12-tone music were all we ever heard, even Beethoven's _Moonlight_ Sonata might well sound dissonant.

Of course, there's a scientific, acoustical basis to harmony and dissonance -- natural overtones and that sort of stuff. But is white noise or pink noise, the clashing of all sorts of frequencies, actually dissonant? Or soothing? If one were to add the "Moonlight" Sonata to a wall of white noise, would the Sonata produce the only true dissonance?

Of that second definition above: "a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements", one might posit that the thump of a drum and the waft of a flute's tone are "disharmonious or unsuitable elements" and yet a flute player performing a melody over the beat of the drum may prove quite satisfying to the ear. As well, in some respect _all_ music deals with tensions and clashes -- those are precisely the elements that mark it as something with contrasting tones, to make it recognizable as music in the first place.

In some sense, any two (or more) notes played together produce a "tension" or "clash" -- so much so that there is really little difference between two different notes played on two flutes, the two different notes played on, say, a flute and a xylophone or whatever two instruments you choose. Dissonance, largely, is assigned by the individual hearer.

If I hear no dissonance in Charles Ives or Elliott Carter or in Mozart's "Dissonance" Quartet, it may well be that the pieces are performed correctly to score. I suspect conductors encounter dissonances all the time in rehearsals of music of all sorts, where a player makes a note error or enters too early, etc. etc.

I, for one, prefer my music to create tension and clashes. I'd rather not listen to a single droned note going on hour after hour. I prefer contrast, but I don't consider that necessarily dissonant.

With this explanation in place, I voted for the "What?"


----------



## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

Not enough information to answer the poll. As others pointed out, dissonance means different things depending on the context. Do I love the Dissonant Quartet? Love it. Do I like dissonance without melodic and/or harmonic resolution? Nah. Probably why certain schools of 20th century classical music do nothing for me.


----------



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

I don't like dissonance for the sake of dissonance. But it can be used very well to convey emotions of dread, fear, or uneasiness for example. Like the famous opening notes of "Harbingers of Spring" from _Le Sacre_.


----------



## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> THIS IS THE THREAD
> 
> where we embrace DISSONANCE in music of all kinds.
> 
> For example, the constructive dissonant music of Elliott Carter here turned supple to set some poems of Elizabeth Bishop.


Sorry, but I ended up turning that off and brought up _Knoxville, Summer of 1915._

Dissonance is great as an occasional feature, coloration or tool, but not as an end in itself.


----------



## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

I've taught middle school band for the past 26 years...so basically, I hear dissonance every day.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Olias said:


> I've taught middle school band for the past 26 years...so basically, I hear dissonance every day.


Where dissonance is something to remedy, not something to wallow in.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> THIS IS THE THREAD
> 
> where we embrace DISSONANCE in music of all kinds.
> 
> For example, the constructive dissonant music of Elliott Carter here turned supple to set some poems of Elizabeth Bishop.


When my mirror gives me something like this, I haul out razor, scissors and comb.

Question: Why set words to music and make them completely incomprehensible? I wonder what the poem is about? It might as well be Urdu. Did Elizabeth Bishop actually approve of this, or was she just paid handsomely for putting up with it? I guess some composers just don't care whether I listen


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I guess some composers just don't care whether I listen


Dissonant composers should not care about you , nor should they make recordings . Their only relationship is to pure music and in the space of their choosing . Down by the upper duck pond 
is nice .


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

No. This is the only music I listen to:


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

adriesba said:


> I don't like dissonance for the sake of dissonance..


Do you like consonance for the same of consonance?


----------



## adriesba (Dec 30, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> Do you like consonance for the same of consonance?


No, not really. I don't like to have too much of either.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

There is music founded on consonant sonorities and music built on other "dissonant" sonorities. This thread is about that music. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the title.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> There is music founded on consonant sonorities and music built on other "dissonant" sonorities. This thread is about that music. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the title.


Here's an example of some music with no consonance whatsoever - is that right? Or is there some consonance in the second half - I've lost the knack of telling.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Play out o tune , sing out o tune - and a crazy rhythm be consonant to that . 

The well-tuned piano has that damned minor 2nd , but two clarinets can have it 
sound like a happily excited duck .


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Dissonance may also be tonal distortion , um , as in fuzzy .


----------



## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

That's kind of like asking members of a poetry forum, 'do you love vowels'? 
Dissonance is a fundamental component in music (meaning Western music especially tonal music)


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Petwhac said:


> That's kind of like asking members of a poetry forum, 'do you love vowels'?
> Dissonance is a fundamental component in music (meaning Western music especially tonal music)


indeed. Even the most bland, diatonic music I can think of (like let's say, Kenny G.) has some degree of dissonance. I guess the only way to make music with no dissonance at all would be a piece made with just tonic and fifth. Imagine a symphony like that. Just C and G repeated for an hour.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> indeed. Even the most bland, diatonic music I can think of (like let's say, Kenny G.) has some degree of dissonance. I guess the only way to make music with no dissonance at all would be a piece made with just tonic and fifth. Imagine a symphony like that. Just C and G repeated for an hour.


There is an interesting piece where use of dissonance is intentionally avoided


----------



## Isaac Blackburn (Feb 26, 2020)

As one of the comments on the above video says, there might be no proper dissonance, but there is horizontal dissonance- harmonies "clash" with our ear's remembrance of the harmony that came before and the harmony that we imagined would follow.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> There is an interesting piece where use of dissonance is intentionally avoided


interesting, altough my ears tell me that there are dissonances in that piece (like at 2:14)


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I don't know that I like dissonance or not but I do like to listen to creaky hinges turned very slowly, so that maybe says something about me.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

SixFootScowl said:


> I don't know that I like dissonance or not but I do like to listen to creaky hinges turned very slowly, so that maybe says something about me.


Sounds like you were exposed to the radio program _Inner Sanctum_ when you were very small. I was! The show ran for a decade, ending in 1952.

"The program's familiar and famed audio trademark was the eerie creaking door which opened and closed the broadcasts. Himan Brown got the idea from a door in the basement that "squeaked like Hell." The door sound was actually made by a rusty desk chair. The program did originally intend to use a door, but on its first use, the door did not creak. Undaunted, Brown grabbed a nearby chair, sat in it and turned, causing a hair-raising squeak. The chair was used from then on as the sound prop. On at least one memorable occasion, a staffer innocently repaired and oiled the chair, thus forcing the sound man to mimic the squeak orally."


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Sounds like you were exposed to the radio program _Inner Sanctum_ when you were very small. I was! The show ran for a decade, ending in 1952.
> 
> "The program's familiar and famed audio trademark was the eerie creaking door which opened and closed the broadcasts. Himan Brown got the idea from a door in the basement that "squeaked like Hell." The door sound was actually made by a rusty desk chair. The program did originally intend to use a door, but on its first use, the door did not creak. Undaunted, Brown grabbed a nearby chair, sat in it and turned, causing a hair-raising squeak. The chair was used from then on as the sound prop. On at least one memorable occasion, a staffer innocently repaired and oiled the chair, thus forcing the sound man to mimic the squeak orally."


I have never head of the program, _Inner Sanctum_. I was born in 1957, the same year the *Mackinac Bridge* opened for traffic--not that it matters but it is more significant to most than my birth.:lol:


----------

