2.3.1 The consonance-dissonance dilemma

applauded Schönberg for his Gurre-Lieder, was broken. And that is a high price indeed.

2.3.1 THE CONSONANCE-DISSONANCE DILEMMA The most striking change in twentieth-century music is the recalibration of the consonance-dissonance relationship. Up until the twentieth century, dissonance was what spiced things up: without dissonance music was really rather insipid and goody-goody. Dissonance was the main expressive tool of music, but there was a golden rule: it had to always return to the consonant tone or suggest such a return. For the Second Viennese School this spice would become the most important element of serious music, but for many listeners it was salt in their wounds. This chapter presents some of the views on this dilemma. - Helmholtz and the perception of consonance and dissonance Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) was the first to provide a scientific foundation of our undeniably different perception of consonance and dissonance. He did so in a book with a very German title Die Lehre von den Tonempfindung als Physiologische Grundlagen für die Theorie der Musik (1863), which fortunately can be encapsulated in English as On the Sensations of Tone. Helmholtz explains the ‘unpleasant’ character of dissonance as beatings (or vibrations) between fundamentals and/ or harmonics of two simultaneous tones. When two fundamentals or harmonics are within a critical bandwidth of each other, the beat causes the two tones to sound dissonant, also called rough sound. For instance, the semitone b´-c´´ is 528-495 = 33 beatings per second. As result of these beatings, the tones themselves do not coexist undisturbed in the ear. They mutually check each other’s uniform flow.

It is not the beatings themselves that cause the amount of dissonance. After all, c´-d´ (297-264) e-g (198-165) c-e (165-132) G-c (13299) and C-G (99-66) also have a difference of 33 and therefore should sound just as dissonant. Therefore Helmholtz concludes that the tones have to be close together in the scale in order for us to experience the roughness.

Helmholtz thus makes a reasonable case that the difference in perception of consonance and dissonance has a physical base in nature and cannot be fully explained by cultural causes. In this context he suggests that the neurology of our hearing is not able to properly process the beating within a certain bandwidth because the two tones are constantly strongly influencing each other.25

25 For further reading, see: Helmholtz (1863, 1875), Ch. X and XI.

- Nature or Nurture? The nature/nurture issue refers to the debate about whether talent comes at birth through genetic material or is acquired through upbringing. The brain studies that I have consulted which say something about the consonant-dissonant issue seem to suggest that Nature has by now mainly won the argument. Studies among children between the ages of 6 to 10 months have shown that they can already detect interval changes in short melodies. It is highly unlikely that children at this age have somehow acquired musical knowledge. In any case they are unaware of the musical conventions in Western culture. Both children and adults detect interval changes more easily when the relationships are simple, such as in a fifth (3:2) or a fourth (4:3) than when they are complex, like in a tritone (45:32). The consonant intervals are not only processed more easily but also influence the attention and mood of the child.26

Music (for example, the mother singing) has a positive influence on the mood of the baby. Research has shown that cortisone levels drop. To soothen a baby, it is more effective than speech. Research results showed that children do not start life as a musical tabula rasa. They are predisposed to pay attention to melodies and rhythms in musical patterns. They are attuned to consonant patterns, both melodic and harmonic, and to metric rhythms. These predispositions are in line with a biological basis for music. They are specific to the ability that lies at the basis of musical skills of adults in all cultures.27 Also intriguing is what evolution biologist have to say about this. Our brain functions much more like the brain of animals than we presume; at birth bird sounds are already in the cat brain, music in the baby brain and visual information, like shadows of birds of prey in the rabbit brain. - Emotion One other question remains, and it is perhaps the most interesting one: is there an emotional difference in how we perceive dissonance? Perhaps this could explain the exceptionally harsh rejection of Arnold Schönberg’s music.

Perhaps dissonant music is unnatural ? But all art is in the end a human expression and therefore not a natural phenomenon to begin with.

26 See also: T. Trainor and B. Heinmiller (1998), 'Infants Prefer to Listen to

Consonance over Dissonance’, Infant Behaviour Development 21, pp. 77-88. 27 D.N.J. Donker, Muziek en hersenen (Music and the brain), Master thesis Music

Science University of Utrecht, 2006.

Neurological research does not provide us with clear-cut answers. Little is known as yet about the neural processing of dissonant intervals, I read. That is disappointing news for me as I would like to have found a clear answer. As it is, parts of the brain certainly react to dissonant sounds: we find them in the amygdala, a core of nerve cells which plays a central role in processing revolting stimuli and in regulating fear. The function of another lobe deep in the brain: the gyrus parahippocampalis, in the processing of emotions is less direct. This organ is part of the limbic system, where most of our emotional life can be traced. The right gyrus parahippocampalis and the right precuneus play a role in learning and memorising, and also in emotional processing. Yet there is no viable research to indicate a clear relation between emotion and dissonance.28

- Schönberg’s High Overtone Explanation The emancipation of dissonance, is how Schönberg called the radical inversion of the consonance- dissonance relationship. He first introduced the concept in his 1926 essay ‘Opinion or Insight’. In his Harmonielehre (1911) he wrote: ”The insight that consonance and dissonance differ not as opposites do, but only in point of degree; that consonances are the sounds closer to the fundamental, dissonances those further away; that their comprehensibility is graduated accordingly, since the nearer ones are easier to comprehend than those further off ”.

Schönberg makes it easy for himself here, simply ignoring the traditional application of dissonance as a means of expression or as the expression of all kinds of threatening or painful things. In addition, his claim that dissonant tones are simply somewhat higher in the harmonic range is largely wrong. The harmonic range does not fit in our proportional fluctuating system from the seventh note and starting from the ninth harmonic tone the deviations only become bigger. Besides, together with dissonance found in the higher overtones there is always the root tone, which strongly influences our listening.

Rather amusing is Schönberg’s assertion that the perception of consonance and dissonance can be ascribed to the degree of development of the listener. Consonance is for beginners, dissonance for the initiated.

28 See also: Maaike van Boven (2012), Actieve hersendelen bij de perceptie van dissonante muzikale intervallen (Active brain parts in the perception of dissonant intervals in music) and:

Gavin M. Bidelman and Ananthanarayan Krishnan (2009), Neural correlates of consonance, dissonance, and the hierarchy of musical pitch in the human brainstem.