4/11/2023 0 Comments Sonority music typesThat the consonance/dissonance status of various intervals has not stayed constant over time, and that the role of consonance/dissonance itself varies between cultures (e.g. Indeed, Grove Music Online 5 even defines consonance and dissonance in terms of pleasantness and unpleasantness, respectively. As a note on terminology, by interval we understand – in conformance with standard music theory – a combination of two notes, sounded either simultaneously (harmonic interval) or in succession (melodic interval) whereas by chord we understand a combination of three or more notes sounded simultaneously, and by sonority any sound composed of distinct pitches, whether or not this sound can be derived from a root and stacking of thirds.ĭespite the fact that the classification system changed over historical periods, the association between the concept of consonance – as construed in music theory and in composers’ practice – and that of liking (pleasantness) endured throughout music history. On the same grounds, intervals not meeting this criterion, such as 45:32 (the tritone), were for a long time considered “undesirable” in composition. Among the earliest intuitions on the consonance of musical intervals was the Pythagorean theory that such intervals are produced by vibrating strings divided according to simple numerical ratios – 2:1 (the octave), 3:2 (the perfect fifth) or 5:4 (the major third) 4. These rules have been formulated in various ways, but tended to gravitate around the concepts of dissonance and consonance. Throughout the history of music, theorists have proposed rules determining which tones should be preferred or avoided when building composite sonorities 3. The present study addresses this lacuna, considering chords from Classical, Jazz, and Avant-garde music. Do we even mean the same thing by “dissonance” when we speak about a minor second, a tritone, a fourth suspension, a dominant seventh chord, a whole-tone sonority, a bitonal chord or a serialist tone cluster? Do these sonorities necessarily have a negative valence? Do our judgements of consonance/dissonance and valence reflect intrinsic features, or does their attribution rather depend on their contextual embedding? Research on the perception of consonance and dissonance has to date mostly focussed on simplified, abstract chord representations, but it has a blind spot about phenomena that occur “in the wild”. However, when considering such phenomena in the stylistic context in which they occur (i.e., in ecological music), distinctions such as “consonant” and “dissonant” no longer appear straightforward. There are detailed music-theoretical accounts that derive such complex sonorities from simpler prototypes (e.g. Western music exhibits a large variety of vertical sonorities, ranging from common chords such as major, minor, diminished and seventh chords, and their respective inversions to numerous sonorities featuring suspensions, augmentations and added dissonances. Indeed, we found that levels of musical sophistication negatively predicted listeners’ tendency to rate the consonance and pleasantness of any one chord as coupled measures, suggesting that musical education and expertise may serve to individuate how these musical dimensions are apprehended. Parncutt’s model only weakly predicted ratings for all but Classical chords, suggesting that listeners’ appraisal of the dissonance and pleasantness of chords bears not only on stimulus-side but also on listener-side factors. Results indicate that pleasantness and roughness ratings were, on average, mirror opposites however, their relative distribution differed greatly across styles, reflecting different underlying aesthetic ideals. Ratings were obtained for chords deemed representative of the harmonic language of three different musical styles (classical, jazz and avant-garde music), plus randomly generated chords. Furthermore, we related these subjective ratings to style of origin and acoustical features of the chords as well as musical sophistication of the raters. Our study aimed to investigate how well appraisals of the roughness and pleasantness dimensions of isolated chords taken from real-world music are predicted by Parncutt’s established model of sensory dissonance. While this might to some extent converge with the unpleasant-pleasant continuum, subjective liking might diverge for various chord forms from music across different styles. Based on objective acoustical properties, chords can be situated on a dissonant-consonant continuum. Western musical styles use a large variety of chords and vertical sonorities.
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