Dissonance might be broadly defined as a music sound that strikes one as unpleasant. It is jumpy, alarming and lacks obvious resolution. So why use dissonant, even dischordant sounds? Excitement and tension are often given as a reason. Consonance is associated with the ideas of restful, smooth, tending to resolution.
Two or more simultaneous, overlapping or close-in-time dissonant sounds may themselves be dissonant: the dissonances reinforce into something else that is jarring and unpleasant.
But to me, the best use of dissonance is to weld a group of dissonant sounds together so that they form a consonant whole that is nevertheless invigorating, lively. "The (consonant) Gestalt is greater than the sum of its (dissonant) parts," so to speak.
In the world of painting, a way to tell the difference between real "modern art" and the fake stuff is to see whether the disparate pictorial dissonances come together to form a higher Gestalt with a form of consonance sometimes called id.
Some listeners hear only the dissonance in metal. Others hear the higher Gestalt as well.
Here in the Fallen World, we tend to experience a chaos of dissonances. But in Paradise perhaps all those dissonances will come together as something higher: grace, beauty and love.
Two or more simultaneous, overlapping or close-in-time dissonant sounds may themselves be dissonant: the dissonances reinforce into something else that is jarring and unpleasant.
But to me, the best use of dissonance is to weld a group of dissonant sounds together so that they form a consonant whole that is nevertheless invigorating, lively. "The (consonant) Gestalt is greater than the sum of its (dissonant) parts," so to speak.
In the world of painting, a way to tell the difference between real "modern art" and the fake stuff is to see whether the disparate pictorial dissonances come together to form a higher Gestalt with a form of consonance sometimes called id.
Some listeners hear only the dissonance in metal. Others hear the higher Gestalt as well.
Here in the Fallen World, we tend to experience a chaos of dissonances. But in Paradise perhaps all those dissonances will come together as something higher: grace, beauty and love.
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