On Feb 4, 2005, at 8:41 AM, dhbailey wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:On Feb 3, 2005, at 9:57 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:On 3 Feb 2005 at 21:51, Christopher Smith wrote:
On Feb 3, 2005, at 8:10 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 3 Feb 2005 at 12:07, Andrew Stiller wrote:
In any event, "emancipation of the dissonance" certainly does not imply elimination of the consonant. I recently had a conversation with a couple of young composers, one of whom had never heard the term. The other one helpfully said, "it means you don't have to resolve them." I don't think anyone could possibly define it better.
How do you tell the difference between the consonance and the dissonance, then?
Without reference to other music or a system of rules not reflected in the musical text where the dissonance is never resolved, the two terms are simply meaningless.
At least, so it seems to *me*.
I had always assumed it meant that dissonance is no longer an issue. Phrases, structure, melody, etc., no longer revolve around whether dissonance is resolved or not, as nobody needs to pay attention to that aspect any more, thus "emancipating" the music to other quests.
But I may have been wrong.
Well, that's all well and good.
But if there's no dissonance, there's also no consonance.
You can't change the definition of one without altering the definition of the other, as they are simply two sides of the same coin.
Right. No dissonance, no consonance. It's not about that any more. You have correctly understood, grasshopper! Christopher
Tension in the listener? That's not important, huh? Release of that tension? That's not important either?
And then people wonder why nobody in the general public liked any of that music and still only puts up with it as it builds the tension in movies and TV shows! But when they put on music to listen to, or go to concerts, they look for that good old mix of dissonance and consonance where the composer builds the tension masterfully and controls the release, so that the audience feels good at the end.
Very interesting that composers (some, not all, thank goodness) decided that how their music affected their audiences no longer mattered.
There are other ways to build and release tension than harmonically. Volume is one. Marcelo Perticone mentioned another couple of very good examples from conventional repertoire. Schoenberg's opus 16 (I think that is the right number) uses pretty much only orchestration to advance the "harmonic progression", if you could call it that, and the result is quite comprehensible. Steve Reich's and John Cage's percussion music are two other fantastic (and eminently listenable) examples which are completely free of harmony in any conventional form.
I would also question the audience's need to have all dissonance released in the end to "feel good." There are many, many works (mostly from the 20th century, granted) that are very successful without resolving harmonically at the end. Just for one broad example, it is very common to end big band pieces on a chord with MORE tension than the rest of the piece, not less, starting with Stan Kenton, and including most of Sammy Nestico's classic work for Count Basie, whose music hardly lacks the "feel good" element.
Christopher
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