'Is tonal composition dead?'

The point is that "dissonance" is an acoustical term, technical, even if poorly defined. "Harsh" isn't.

Nah.

The fact that you may consider something 'dissonant', while I call it 'consonant' tells us that these are not merely acoustical terms...

Nah.

The fact that you may consider something 'dissonant', while I call it 'consonant' tells us that it's not merely an acoustical term...

Or it could mean that the meaning of your words are passing each other by. But there is something damn important here. We can talk about colors as wave-lenghts of light. But can we talk about colors in any other sense? The same goes with sound and the technical terms of accoustic theory.

I'm going to sleep (imagine someone perplexed, wondering how one actually "goes to" sleep. Gardener's criticism of my use of harsh is comparable to someone saying "but I don't feel the "going" in my "going to" sleep. The transition is neutral to me."). I hope someone takes a bite at this; we might all better understand music.

I get what Hugo's saying here, I think... The underlying set of physical characteristics of the sound that you're using to determine whether an interval is dissonant is different from his. However, the oddness of the partial (or any other deducible aspect of the sound) remains the same.

He's just using written - and intellectual - shortcuts to refer to an assumedly highly similar set. What an chicago-school economist might call a liberal idea, a socialist party member wouldn't -- no judgement call, just different set. However, I feel they would, on average, concur that the new idea is more liberal than the existing one.

This isn't to say that there's some master scale, obviously a fruitless quest, but the similarity in the observer's starting conditions cause such parallelism. Eliminating the similar conditions leaves no reason for the similar rankings, like in the case of dissonance.

Nah.

The fact that you may consider something 'dissonant', while I call it 'consonant' tells us that these are not merely acoustical terms...

No, certainly not merely. They have of course many different aspects, alot of which are highly subjective. But regardless of other meanings they have, they are still also acoustical terms.

The idea to research the nature of consonance and dissonance acoustically certainly came from quite subjective impressions first that even may have been something like "hmm, some intervals sound harsher/richer/sharper/less balanced/whatever to me than others, let's see whether there's an explanation behind this".

However, the terms consonance and dissonance have since the time Aristotle first tried to describe them scientifically become something more than this original subjective feeling. And while until today no sufficient scientific definition of them has prevailed, they still are a matter of acoustical research and not just impressions like "harsh".

And no, Hugowin, I don't think your example fits. Again, I'm not talking about taking words literally. The term "going to sleep" is a standard expression with a fixed meaning. Using "harsh" for "dissonant" isn't just another word with the same meaning, it's an entirely different category.

We certainly can talk about colours in other senses than the physical one. I have no issues with that whatsoever. And I have no issues with talking about sounds in non-scientific terms. I only have issues with equating the two entirely different categories.

Saying that for yourself, you define dissonance as harshness is certainly okay. You're using dissonance as a subjective term here, which it certainly can be, as Robin pointed out. But you can't define what dissonance means universally by talking about harshness. That's my only issue.

I see it pretty simple, science and so on don't really give a damn about what sounds "mean", or how intervals sound. It just points out the observable physical facts.

Everything else is built on perception of that stuff, nothing more than that. As such, it's entirely and absolutely subjective.

This also ties in with the concept that we hear the things we hear in the way we hear them (interpretation) through the cultural/etc influence. It has nothing to do with the physical phenomenon of the vibrations or any of that. That's just the stimulant.

So, really, I don't see a problem.

Another thing, saying "Dissonant" is "Unpleasant" is yet another interpretation of the whole thing and has nothing to do with dissonances at all, but the way they are perceived which is more a matter of cultural and social influence rather than something objective.

But of course we know that already, right?

And no, Hugowin, I don't think your example fits. Again, I'm not talking about taking words literally. The term "going to sleep" is a standard expression with a fixed meaning. Using "harsh" for "dissonant" isn't just another word with the same meaning, it's an entirely different category.

I'm asking, again, what does 'harsh' add that 'dissonance' lacks? What does "an entirely different category" mean about 'harsh'? I'm curious of the distinction you are trying to make. The interesting thing is not our little scruples, but that distinction.

Well, they are just two different words with different meanings. Why should they mean the same thing?

The different categories are an acoustic term on one hand and a sensual impression on the other. Of course equalling such terms is often helpful, or even necessary, when trying to explain to someone what you mean with a certain term. But that doesn't make the two words equal, and it can still be contested subjectively.

I might technically just claim that "dissonance" means "sleekness" and challenge you to say what "sleekness" adds that "dissonance" lacks. But because of the fact that "sleekness" isn't an acoustical term at all and that "dissonant" isn't clearly defined, you can't really "prove" that this statement wrong, you can merely assert that it doesn't meet your subjective impression. Likewise you could make wild claims that "dissonance" means almost anything.

The point is simply that however helpful and however fitting those comparisons may be for some people, there simply are no grounds for assuming them to be universal.

However, the actual problem, as has been mentioned before, is that the word "dissonance" is used in so many different ways by different people at the same time. Some use it and mean a specific acoustical definition with it, like the Pythagorean one about simple frequency ratios, or the one of Helmholtz. Other use it as a historical/cultural term that is defined by the meaning it has taken during the "common practice period". And yet others use it as a way of describing a personal impression. And most people use some sort of mixture.

I -can- very well accept this latter approach and people calling "dissonant" what feels "harsh", "rich" or whatever else to them. As long as they treat it exactly like that, as subjective feelings.

Personally, I can't say what dissonance exactly is. I just know that certain descriptions are flawed.

Tonality is not dead, it just smells funny.

Hands remains quotable! :D

You rock.

I might technically just claim that "dissonance" means "sleekness" and challenge you to say what "sleekness" adds that "dissonance" lacks. But because of the fact that "sleekness" isn't an acoustical term at all and that "dissonant" isn't clearly defined, you can't really "prove" that this statement wrong, you can merely assert that it doesn't meet your subjective impression. Likewise you could make wild claims that "dissonance" means almost anything.

Hence why I try to always talk about the objective usage of the damn things in music literature, rather than whatever they are "supposed" to mean. I don't really care what people's opinions on it are so much as what it actually means to the development of music altogether.

It's easy to step into a circular argument if we're going to try to describe how harsh a semitone sounds compared to a major second. Screw that. Instead, it's much more interesting to see how people have used said intervals in music and what role it played in harmony/composition/!?

So, consonance and dissonance only exist within this context. They could've been named different for all I care or address different things, that's not important. The important thing is that there are these two concepts and they have shaped a lot of things and introduced certain traditions, etc etc.

Likewise, if I see a large percentage of composers from X or Y period "resolving their dissonances" in the music, I don't have any real reason to think it's because dissonances are unpleasant, harsh, etc. That's leaping to conclusions. Instead, all it means is that there's a model based on the relationships of the intervals and that's it. It has more to do with tradition than with the intervals themselves.

I may find that some composers have claimed it WAS because these intervals were unpleasant to them, but is this not just agreeing with the tradition rather than having a real reason to do what they did? What came first, the tradition that conditioned the opinion or the opinion that created the tradition?

So, really, it's best to study the actual facts and leave the opinions as a secondary extra.