Dissonance

dissonance, dissonancy

Music a sensation commonly associated with all intervals of the second and seventh, all diminished and augmented intervals, and all chords based on these intervals

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dissonance [′dis·ə·nəns]

(acoustics)

An unpleasant combination of harmonics heard when certain musical tones are played simultaneously. Also known as discord.

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Dissonance 

in music, the sounding of tones that do not “blend” with each other. (Dissonance should not be confused with cacophony, which is aesthetically unpleasing, disharmonic sound.) The opposite of dissonance is consonance.

Augmented and diminished seconds and sevenths, raised and lowered intervals, and any chords that contain any of these intervals are considered dissonant. With respect to the base a fourth is also considered dissonant. From a mathematical and acoustical point of view, dissonance is a more complicated ratio between the numbers of vibrations (length of the strings) than consonance, the difference between consonance and dissonance is only quantitative, and the line between them is conventional. From the standpoint of music psychology, dissonance is heard as a more tense or unstable sound than consonance. In the major and minor system the qualitative differences between consonance and dissonance achieve a degree of polarization and contrast and have great aesthetic value. This difference in the perception of dissonant and consonant sounds has always been considered in the study of composition. Until the 17th century the complete subordination of dissonance to consonance was the rule. Dissonant sounds were musically prepared for and resolved back into consonance. From the 17th to 19th centuries dissonances were always resolved. From the end of the 19th century and particularly in the 20th century dissonance was used more frequently and independently, without musical preparation and without resolution.

REFERENCES

Garbuzov, N. A. “O konsoniruiushchikh i dissoniruiushchikh intervalakh.” Muzykal’noe obrazovanie, 1930, nos. 4-5.
Kleshchov, S. V. “K voprosu o razlichii dissoniruiushchikh i konsoniruiushchikh sozvuchii.” Trudy fiziologicheskikh laboratorii akademika I. P P. Pavlova, 1941, no. 10.
Tiulin, Lu. N. “Sovremennaia garmoniia i ee istoricheskoe proiskhozhdenie.” In Voprosy sovremennoi muzyki. Leningrad, 1963.
Helmholtz, H. Uchenie o slukhovykh oshchushcheniiakh kak fiziologicheskaia osnova dlia teorii muzyki. St. Petersburg, 1875. (Translated from German.)
Stumpf, C. Konsonanz und Dissonanz. Leipzig, 1898.
Riemann, H. “Zur Theorie der Konsonanz und Dissonanz.” In the collection Präludien und Studien, vol. 3. Leipzig, 1910.

IU. N. KHOLOPOV

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Dissonance 

a variety of assonant rhyme in which the accented vowels differ—for example, slóvo, sléva, and slava. The sound repetition is constructed with consonants; consequently, dissonance is often called consonance. Dissonance, a rarely used but expressive technique, is an innovation of 20th-century poetry. Examples of dissonance appear in the following:

Na poberezh’e posle burl
Tvoikh kamnei ia slyshu khrust,
O, more, samyi umnyi v mire
Khudozhnik-abstraktsionist!

L. N. Martynov