Cazden - The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance Annotated

The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance
Author(s): Norman Cazden

Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Dec.,
1980), pp. 123-168
Published by: Croatian Musicological Society
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N. CAZDEN, CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE, IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168 123
THE DEFINITION OF CONSONANCE

AND DISSONANCE*
UDC:781.22
INORMAN CAZDEN | Original Scientific Paper
Izvorni znanstveni dlanak
Received: April 5, 1980
School of Performing Arts, 5. travnja
Recljeno:5. travna 1980.
1980.
Primijeno:
Division of Music, University Accepted: July 7, 1980
of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469, Prihvaceno: 7. srpnja 1980.
U.S.A.
1.1 The understanding of consonance and dissonance as they

appear 'in Western music has been beset by such notorious diffi-
culties and entanglements as have proven the despair of music
theorists. Many have abandoned hope of ever explaining to gen-
eral satisfaction why musical harmony sounds harmonious. Not
least among the hurdles encountered has been how to define the
relevant terms so that they can apply unmistakably to observed
practice in musical compositions, and yet so that they may at the
same time be reconciled, both with the more rational precepts of
speculative music theory, and with the very considerable data of-
fered by mathematics, by acoustics, by the physiology of hearing
and by psychoacoustics, much of it validated by experimental evi-
dence. The troubled history of wrestlings with the concepts con-
sonance and dissonance in the theory of music, and the conten-
tious views and conflicting explanations of them offered by
many estimable students and by their school,s and factions, testi-
fy not only to wide diversities in outlook, but also to a common
failure to identify with adequate rigor just what they mean by the
terms.
1.2 Perhaps the most severe difficulty for such definition was
compounded early on, when medieval music theorists undertook
to designate and to treat as >)consonant relations,, for the pur-
poses of their contemporary practice of polyphony, values taken
over from ancient Greek music theory that had pertained rather
to tuning ratios. Due to that error, however the terms conso-
nance and disso,nance are understood to this day, they are still usu-
ally attached to fixed properties of pitch intervals, and indeed of
intervals abstracted both from their real sonorous quality and

124 N. CAZDEN, CONSONANCEAND DISSONANCE,IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168
from their musical contexts, rather than to identify dynamic func-

tions in the course of harmonic progressions. The contradictions
arising from such initially static formulations may be exemplified
in the many valiant but unconvincing attempts by theorists to
justify the observed preference, in the relevant traditional praxis,
of the >>,imperfectlyconsonant< thirds over the >>perfectlyconso-
nant( fifths; to validate the known dissonant treatment of the
six-four chord; -to account for the seemingly irrelevant if wise
proscription of small >>consonant<(intervals in a deep bass reg-
ister; and of course, to explain away the undeniable sensuous beau-
ty of numerous usages in twentieth century styles which the older
music theory would perforce exclude as horrendously >dissonant.(
1.3 This habit of identifying consonance with tuning ratio, and
hence inadvertently with a supposedly inherent property of inter-
vals considered in isolation, continues in this form to the present.
With the accumulation of knowledge about the physics of sound,
the physiology of hearing and the psychology of perception, impor-
tant progress might otherwise have been made, both towards a
more general grasp of sonorous euphony in music, and towards
some consequent detailed evaluation and classification of those
absolute sonorous values with which composers of this century
have appeared most intrigued. Instead, music theory and scientif-
ic theory alike have attempted to fit some isolated features affect-
ing euphony into the compositional treatments of consonant and
dissonant function, with which they are not commensurable. Both
types of investigation have accordingly and iinevitably come to
grief.
1.4 My purpose here is therefore to define consonance and dis-
sonance more accurately and more cogently, in such fashion as
shall enable us better to distinguish them as musical functions.
For this purpose it is necessary first of all to differentiate them,
on the one hand from the pre-musical role of tuning standards,
and on the other hand from the psychoacoustic euphony values
of isolated sonorities. But in order to refine those differentiations,
it becomes essential to trace many of the difficulties that have
hitherto resulted from confusions among these different orders
of data.
1.5 The paired opposities consonance and dissonance lend
themselves well to expressing 'the immanent polar contrast of
their musical functions. No such antithesis is implied or belongs
to the more neutral concepts of tuning standards or of absolute
sonorous euphony. It is therefore both proper and useful to pre-
empt the terms consonance and disssonance for reference to their
observed action during the functional harmonic progressions of
tonal music. In contrast, the establishment of a restricted class
of intervals as tuning standards belongs, not to the processes pe-

N. CAZDEN, CONSONANCEAND DISSONANCE, IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168 125
Fig. la p
Just ratio ? 8:3 4:1
1:1 2:1 3:2 4:33 ' . -0
[perF rct Unison

f -0 -0 -4
(perfectj Unison Octave Fifth Fourth Twelfth Eleventh Double Octave
FPg.1b
Just ratio ? ? ? ? ? i 3
65:4 6:5 5:3 $:5 5:2
Major Minor _.i
Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor Major

Third Third Sixth Sixth Tenth Tenth Thirteenth
Fig. 1c
Just ratio ??
?6::4 8:6:"5 5:4:3 15:12:10 20:15:12 24:20:15
e
_8
b8 "6"8
5 6 Minor Minorj Minor6
Major Major J Major4 3 3 r4
Fig. 7 d
?
7:4 7:?6
7:6 s:4
A I
Minor Dominant
Seventh Seventh
culiar to that or any other music system, but to what obtains be-
fore music-making begins. Likewise, the complex and intriguing
phenomena that affect psychoacoustic euphony belong, in that
music system or any other, rather to the domain of overall sono-
rity, to what may be termed the timbre and the orchestration of
sonorous values, rather than to the dimension of harmony proper.

126 N. CAZDEN,CONSONANCEAND DISSONANCE,IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168
2.1 Literally, consonance, from the Latin consonare, means

sounding together. The term occurs in some early music theory
as a substantive noun, a synonym for interval. In current familiar
usage, the term consonance has normally been taken to identify
a special quality of harmonious agreement heard during the simul-
taneous sounding of certain musical intervals, and also during the
sounding of larger aggregates of tones, known as triads or triadic
chords, that are made up exclusively of those intervals. Intervals
or chords not in this special class are said to s,ound in disagree-
ment or dissonance.
2.2 Combinations thus defined as consonant are further differ-
entiated as perfect or as imperfect types. Fig. la shows Ithe in-
tervals commonly designated as perfect consonances in standard
harmony texts, while Fig. lb shows the intervals, and Fig. lc typi-
cal triad forms, recognized as imperfect consonances. A question
mark in the example indicates a combination whose consonance
status or definition has been seriously challenged.
2.3 According to some >)evolutionary<(theorists, combinations
once regarded as >>milddissonance,< such as those in Fig. ld, ought
now to be added to the approved list. Other theori'sts have de-
clared any combination to be consonant if the composer wills it so,,
while still others claim that there is no such thing as either a con-
sonant or a dissonant combination per se. They may prove right,
yet the statement in that form reveals little.
2.4 However, it is generally granted that the special quality
understood as consonant agreement should not be mistaken for
agreeableness or agreeable effect, in the sense of pleasing or beau-
tiful harmoniousness. It has often been pointed out that combi-
nations that are normally classed as consonant, let us say those
in Fig. 2a, 2b and 2c, may in fact sound far from pleasant or ap-
pealing by themselves. And contrariwise, many combinations usu-
ally classified as dissonant, such as those in Fig. 2d, 2e and 2f, in
the opinion of many, may indeed afford a lovely sonorous ring.
Fi. 2
a b c d e f
f'f f p
I
&I2rm m1

2.5 It is also notorious that in the common practice of tradi.
tional Western harmony, parallel successions of the perfect conso-
nances shown in Fig. la are deemed oddly reprehensible, save for
those unisons and octaves used for sonorous doubling, whereas
successions of the supposedly inferior imperfect consonances of
Fig. lb seem normal and fully acceptable. Since it should also be
obvious that preferences as to the sheer beauty of sonorous com-
binations can and do vary among individuals, and that overall
>>soundideals( change notably over hisltorical time, while they dif-
fer widely among the diverse music cultures found over the world
scene, no significant view of the consonance problem accepts sen-
sory pleasure as its reliable criterion.
2.6 Thus, as it is commonly defined, the term consonance re-
fers, more precisely, less to immediate auditory beauty than to a
sense of agreement, akin to a judgment of being well-adjusted, of
being in accord. It implies the intuitive recognition of a correct
or of fitting together, or more simply of fittingness.
2.7 So understood, it becomes less disconcerting to find that
the perfect consonances are most often described by listeners as
poor or >empty( combinations of tones, paradoxically inferior
as harmonies to the imperfect consonances, the more so when pre-
sented in a musical context rather than in isolation. That seem-
ing discrepancy is overcome by observing that the peculiar ))con-
sonant(< property of the perfect intervals lies in their service, not
as especially harmonious and thus preferable resonances, but as
)>just(tor as adjustment standards, or more simply, as readily tun-
able relationships. A ),consonant interval( in this sense may there-
fore be described best as one easily tuned with precision by the
unaided ear. That property is indeed characteristic of the perfect
consonances alone. It explains why stringed and keyboard instru-
ments are normally tuned in unisons, fourths, fifths and octaves.
2.8 This straightforward meaning of consonant agreement, by
which are identified readily tunable relationships, appears to con-
form also to the original application of the term consonance, both
by the followers of Pythagoras (ca. 600 B. C.) and by their oppo-
,nent Aristoxenos (ca. 320 B. C.). Perhaps the severe difficulties of
consonance theories have come about chiefly because the valid
measures by which the Pythagoreans correctly identified tunable
ratios were pressed into service, many centuries later, as prescrip-
tions for artistic procedure in the art of counterpoint, to which
it was mistakenly assumed those tuning values lought to apply.
That error continues to this day to haunt music theory, and to
pervade practical manuals with painful discrepancies.
2.9 Allowing for numerous variants, and for the eager pursuit
of numerous side-issues, we may distinguish three fundamental
approaches to explanation of the phenomenon of consonance. These

three approaches may be called the Natural Law theory, the

Aristoxenian theory, and the Systemic theory.
3.00 Especially in its earlier elaborations, the Natural Law the-
ory derives from the doctrine of Pythagoras, and it may in princi-
ple be identified with it. This Natural Law theory remains by far
the most widespread view of consonance. It is that most often
cited, and assumed to be valid without further critique, in prescrip-
tive texts on the arts of musical harmony and counterpoint, and
also in explanations of musical acoustics by philosophers, physi-
cists, investigators of auditory and perceptual phenomena, and of
course by those who hastily summarize their findings. In its most
general axiomatic form, the Natural Law theory states that conso-
nance results from the ratios of small whole numbers.1
3.01 Crystallization of that axiom was ascribed by his disci-
ples to Pythagoras2, though undoubtedly its basis had been widely
known to ancient civilizations3. However, inseparably from the
strictly musical relevance of the principle, the magic of >numbers
come to life as music, has long been linked more to the marvels
of mystic cosmologies and numerological speculations than to
any indications bearing on the practice of music as an art. It is
accordingly noteworthy that for the purposes of speculative ven-
tures devoted to wonderment over the >>harmonyof the spheres,(
the musical relevance tends ever to remain remote and elementary.
Typically their revelations have applied more to the raw ingre-
dients that are later transformed into music, to tuning formulas
or to the derivation and naming of scale degrees, than to musical
relationships proper. So tenuous and curiously pre-musical a han-
dling is retained down to the present day in the fanciful use of
musical metaphor that inspires the still extensive literature of
number mysticism, such as occasionally also entices students with
musical training and experience.4
3.02 Nevertheless, the principle connecting music and number
represents the sort of positive generalization of ancient craft lore
that has more usually been disdained by speculative philosophers.
I Norman CAZDEN, ?Musical intervals and number Jour-
simple ratios,(
nal of Research in Music Education, 7 (1959), 197-220.
2
Alexander-Joseph-Hydulphe VINCENT, Notice sur trois manuscrits
grecs relatifs a la musique, avec une traduction frangaise et des commen-
taires (1847); Anselme Edouard CHAIGNET, Pythagore et la Philosophie
Pythagoricienne, 2 t. (1873); K. S. Guthrie [translator], Pythagoras: source-
book and library, containing the biographies by Iamblichus, Porphyry,
Anonymous Photius, and Diogenes Laertius, etc... (1919).
3 Fritz A. preserved by )>The
KUTTNER, music of China,<( Ethnomusicology, 8 (1954),
J121-127.
Fidel Amy-Sage [pseudonym] et al, Le Voile d'Isis: numero spdcial sur
la musique dans ses rapports avec l'esoterisme, 33e Annee N' 100 (1928);
Erich M. von HORNBOSTEL, *Tonart und Ethos,< Festschrift fiir Johannes
Wolf (1929), 73-78; Ernest BRITT, La Lyre d'Apollon (1931); Alain DANIE-

The legend that Pythagoras personally discovered that connection,
through his chance observations of the intervals resulting among
the tones produced by a blacksmith, whom he heard pounding
on anvils of different but proportional sizes, is not supported as
history, and it is not correct as to the acoustic results claimed5.
3.03 The direct reference of the Pythagorean axiom is best un-
dersltood as a prediction that, provided their weights and tensions
are equal, certain familiar perfect intervals are produced by the
sounding of strings of precisely proportional lengths. Those con-
ditions are met on 'the medieval monochord, a device whereby a
single string may be sounded alternately in measured proportion-
al segments or in its entire length. By this means, as. also on a
string of a modern violin or guitar, it is readily demonstrated
that string lengths in the ratio 1:1 produce the relationship of a
union, 1:2 an octave, 2:3 a fifth, 3:4 a fourth, and similarly for
,intervals larger than an octave, as 1:3, which yields a twelfth.
3.04 It should be cautioned that in such demonstrations the
lower of the two ratio numbers, serving to indicate the shorter
string length, corresponds to the higher pitch. Thus, in sounding
of the fifth c - g, the string length containing 2 units of mea-
surement results in the higher tone g, while the length of 3 units
produces the c. Later and more commonly cited evidences of sup-
port for the Pythagorean axiom, in the fields of physical, physiol-
ogical and psychological acoustics, are regularly expressed numer-
ically, as in Fig. 1 above, rather as reciprocals of the stated ra-
tios: Ithe octave as 2:1, the fifth as 3:2, the fourth as 4:3 and so on.
Hence in the ins;tance of that s,ame fifth c - g, the number 3
would now represent the higher tone g and the 2 stand as the nu-
merical rendering of the c.
3.05 The rule that those proportional lengths of vibrating
strings (and air columns) that are expressible by small integers
result in the sounding of the recognized perfect intervals is ob-
tained again, with the numbers in that reciprocal form, by ob-
serving the ratios between two or more vibration frequencies.6
Thus, if the standard frequency a' = 440 Hz be sounded, the fre-
quency of the e" a perfect fifth higher proves to be 660 Hz, show-
ing thus that the interval of the fifth is constituted by the ratio
660:440 or 3:2. The deeper meaning of the term consonance, ap-
LOU, Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales (1943); Hans KAYSER,
Lehrbuch der Harmonik (1950); Ernst BINDEL, Die Zahlengrundlagen der
Musik, 2 Bde. (1950-51); Lionel STEBBING [editor and compiler], Music:
its occult basis and healing value (1958); Rudolf HAASE, Proportionen in
der Seele (1960).
Marin MERSENNE, Traite de l'Harmonie Universelle (1627).
6Marin MERSENNE, Harmonie Universelle (1634); Galileo GALILEI,
Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche Intorno a Due Nouve Scienze (1638)
[reprint: Opera, VIII (1898)].

plied in this sense, may even be formulated as the psychoacoustic

property that enables a violinist to identify and to tune that very
fifth with high accuracy, entirely by ear.
3.06 Like vibration frequencies, and indeed because those fre-
quencies are engendered during the sounding of most muslical tones,
the natural acoustic phenomena of harmonic overtones show
that the isame simple ratios are also commonly present within any
single sounding tone. Those ratios become evident among the
tone's harmonic partials, or harmonics, and they can be read di-
rectly between the sequentially numbered partials of the harmon-
ic series, those numbers being multipliers of the fundamental
frequency of the given tone7. Thus the harmonics numbered 3 and
2 in Fig. 3 prove to be a perfect fifth apart; the indices 8 and 4,
reducible to 2:1, are a perfect octave apart; and so on.
Fig. 3
_1 5?6I 4 I 2 4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
3.07 This demonstration that simple ratios occur, not only
between the separate physical vibration frequencies of the perfect
intervals, but also between the overtone constituents of a single
resonant fundamental, is commor^'y regarded as impressive and
conclusive proof that a special quality peculiar to the perfect in-
tervals arises from an incontrovertible Law of Nature. Neverthe-
less, as a matter of sheer definition, it does not follow that musi-
cal consonance corresponds to that phenomenon.
3.08 The harmonic series in particular is further interpreted
to provide an elegant, automatic and inescapable natural guide to
(a) a gradation among consonant values of intervals, with those
lowest in the series, and hence of simpler ratio, being supe-
rior, and with those requiring higher numbers placed in de-
creasing rank order of natural perfection; and
(b) an historical evolution in the appreciation of consonance val-
ue, through the increas,ing sensitizing of educated ears, at
each stage of which the next higher index values achieve a
then newly recognized acceptability for musical satisfac-
tion8.
7 Joseph SAUVEUR, DSyst6me general des intervalles des sons<
(1701). Me-
moires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences (1704), 297-364; Robert M. OG-
DEN, Hearing (1924); Lloyd P. FARRAR, >>Theconcept of overtones in scien-
tific and musical thought (Descartes to Rameau),,, Thesis, University of Illi-
nois (1956).
8 Christiaan
HUYGHENS, Nouvelle Cycle Harmonique (1961) [reprint:
Oeuvres Completes, t. 20 (1940)]; Denis BALLIERE DE LAISEMENT, The-
orie de la Musique (1765); C. Hubert H. PARRY, Style in Musical Art (1911);

3.09 The same simple ratios again appear to underlie a differen-
tial response to the perfect intervals arising in the physiological
procesls of hearing.9 One such effect relates to beats or Schwebun-
gen, which may be described as disturbing patterns of mutual
interferences or intermittencies, produced in the ear when vibra-
tions of differing frequency are sounded'?. Those disturbances
prove to be absent, or to be at a minimum deemed tolerable, when
the respective frequencies are in simple ratio to each other. By
this criterion therefore the degrees of auditory smoothness of in-
tervals, defined as freedom from disturbing beats, turn out to
match their lowest possible indices in the harmonic series. If such
sensory smoothness be equated to what is meant by consonance,
iiltsevidence thus serves once again to verify the efficacy of ratios
of small integers.
3.10 Simple ratios among vibration frequencies also result in
an auditory matching among combination tones. These are addi-
tional resonances, which like beats are not physically present, and
which are excited in the ear, due to that organ's asymmetrical and
nonlinear structure, whenever two or more tones are sounded be-
yond a minimal intensity1. Two types of combination tones are
identified:
Maurice EMMANUEL, >Grece: art greco-romain,< Encyclopedie de la Mu-
sique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire, Partie I, t. I (1914), 377-537; Hen-
ry J. WATT, The Foundations of Music (1919); Alfredo CASELLA, The Evo-
lution of Music (1924); Nadia BOULANGER, ))Lectures on modern music,<
Rice Institute Pamphlets, 13 (1926), 113-195; John Redfield, Music: a Sci-
ence and an Art (1930); Henry COWELL, New Musical Resources (1931);
Ernst KURTH, Musikpsychologie (1931); George Frederick MCKAY, The
Technique of Modern Harmony (1941); Harry PARTCH, Genesis of a Music
(1949); Jacques CHAILLEY, Traite Historique d'Analyse Musicale (1951);
Eugene Gower BUGG and Albert S. THOMPSON, ))An experimental test of
the genetic theory of consonance,<< Journal of General Psychology, 47 (1952),
71-90; Norman CAZDEN, ,>The harmonic evolution of Jacques Chailley,<
Journal of Music Theory, 12 (1968), 119-159.
9 Norman CAZDEN, ?Sensory theories of musical consonance,<( Journal of
Aesthetics & Art Criticism, 20 (1962), 301-319.
10
Joseph SAUVEUR, op. cit. (1701); Robert SMITH, Harmonics, or the
philosophy of musical sounds (1749); Jean Baptiste MERCADIER, Nouveau
Systeme de Musique (1776); Benjamin PEIRCE, An Elementary Treatise on
Sound (1836); Herman Ludwig Ferdinand von HELMHOLTZ, On the Sen-
sations of Tone, 21885 (translated with additional notes and appendix from
'1877 by Alexander J. Ellis [reprint (1954)]; R. PLOMP, )>Beats of mistuned
consonances,<< Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 42 (1967), 462-
-474.
"
Giuseppe TARTINI, Trattato di Musica Secondo da Vera Scienza dell'
Armonia [1724] (1754); Georg Andreas SORGE, Vorgemach Musicalischer
Composition (1745-47); John HAWKINS [Stillingfleet], Principles and Pow-
er of Harmony (1771); Felix KRUEGER, >Beobachtungen iiber Zweiklin-
ge,< Philosophische Studien (Wundts), 16 (1900), 307-379, 568-663; Felix
KRUEGER, >Differenztone und Konsonanz,< Archiv fir die Gesamte Psy-
chologie, 1 (1903), 205-275; 2 (1904), 1-80; Felix KRUEGER, >Die Theorie
der Konsonanz,<( Psychologische Studien (Wundts), 1 (1906), 305-387: 2

N. CAZDEN,CONSONANCEAND DISSONANCE,IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168
132
(a) Difference tones, corresponding to vibration rates equal to

the differences in frequency between two or more primary
tones, or, in higher orders, to the differences between their
respective harmonic overtone frequencies; and
(b) Summation tones, corresponding to vibration rates equal
to the sums of the two or more primary frequencies, or, in
higher orders, to the sums of their respective harmonic
overtone frequencies.
In those special cases where primary vibrations are in simple
ratio to each other, or, in effect, where they belong to the same
harmonic series, any combination tones produced either imerely
reinforce those primaries already present, or else they contribute
further partials of the same series. Consequently a distinctive
matching of combination tones, deemed effective in inducing a
sense of consonant agreement, once more proves to be character-
istic of the perfect intervals, whose ratios are expressible in small
integers.
3.11 What has been termed the affinity of tones or their Klang-
verwandtschaft is also markedly increased as the fundamental
frequencies of their intervals approach the isimplest ratios. Their
lowest and presumedly most prominent overtones then tend to
coincide and to reinforce each other. That coincidence and mutu-
al reinforcement are held to induce a special impression of sen-
sory blending, hence of belonging together2. Coincidences among
combination tones as well as among harmonic overtones may con-
tribute to the felt unifying effect.'3 The ear's recognition of the af-
finity resultiing whenever intervals ipiresentsimple ratios is deemed
the essence of consonance judgment. That distinctive blending is
not heard in combinations expressible only by more complex ra-
tios, whose constituents correspondingly appear to sound iin mu-
tual conflict.
3.12 Even before the phenomena of beats, combination tones
and coincident overtones were discovered and investigated, inter-
vals of simple ratio were believed to induce thereby a character-
istic intuitive impression of rightness, or a kind of rationality in
audible form, identifiable as consonance. Though admittedly
(1906), 205-255; 4 (1908), 201-282; 5 (1910), 294-411; Carl STUMPF, )>Diffe-
renztone und Konsonanz,<( Beitrige zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, 4
(1909), 90-104; Paul HINDEMITH, The Craft of Musical Composition (1942)
(translated by Arthur Mendel, 21945, 2 vols., vol. 1, from Unterweisung im
Tonsatz (1937), 21940, 2 Bde., Bd. I); Norman CAZDEN, ,Hindemith and
Nature,<< The Music Review, 15 (1954), 288-306.
12
Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, Dictionnaire de Musique (1764), '1768, 119;
HELMHOLTZ, op. cit.; Joseph ACHTELIK, Der Naturklang als Wurzel Aller
Harmonien, 2 Bde. (1922); Miecyslaw KOLINSKI, Konsonanz als Grundlage
Einer Neuen Akkordlehre (1936).
3 Heinrich
HUSMANN, Vom Wesen der Konsonanz (1953).

sound vibrations cannot themselves be perceived or counted di-

rectly, the human mind was nevertheless declared capable of recog-
nizing and taking special pleasure in the orderly simplicity and
periodicity of certain favored combinations. While the intuitive
means by which apperception was enabled to register their pecul-
iar goodness remained unspecified, in almost tautological fashion
the inherently rational proclivity of the mind or soul was judged
capable of distinguishing and appreciating whenever relations
among sounding tones allow of formulation in simple number ra-
tios14. On this interpretation, the >conso,nance( of such relations
plainly stands to reason, without requiring other assigned cause.
3.13 More recent pursuit of this presumed inherent rational pro-
clivity of the mind proposes that though sound vibrations as such
are indeed not perceptible on a real-time scale, the rapid and ele-
mental rhythmic patterns that their combinations produce on a
microtime level can and do impress themselves ,on the nervous
system. Thereby they are held to produce, by subliminal means,
an unmils.takable awareness of the beauty presented by simple ra-
tios'5. Microrhythms are accordingly advanced as the longasought
explanation for consonance response.
3.14 Among other intuitive attributes that have been predi-
cated of interval relations expressible iin simple ratios, the most
explored has been a )second component,< of pitch perception. Its
focus is the remarkable impression of near-identity between tones
and their octave >duplicates,< an identity which transcends their
14
Rend DESCARTES, Compendium Musicae [1618] (1650); (translated by
W. Brouckner, 1653; [Abrege de la Musique], traduction de Victor Cousins,
Oeuvres, t. 5 (1824), 444-503; edition critique, Oeuvres X (1908), 79-150;
translated by W. Robert, 1961); Ioannis KEPLER, Harmonices Mundi (1619);
P. Daniello BARTOLI, Del Suono de Tremori Armonici e dell' Udito (1679);
Godefrid Guil. LEIBNIZ, Epistolae ad Diversos, t. 1 (1734), 239-242; G. W.
LEIBNIZ, Principes de la Nature et de la Grace Fondes en Raison, etc.
[dditeur A. Robinet (1954)]; Leonhard EULER, Tentamen Novae Theoriae
Musicae (1739).
'5 F. W. OPELT, Allgemeine Theorie der Musik auf den Rhythmus der
Klangwellenpulse gegriindet, etc. (1852); Sylvanus P. THOMPSON, The Phys-
ical Foundations of Music (1890); B. GRASSI-LANDI, >Genesi della Musica,<
Rivista Musicale Italiana, 6 (1899), 45-70, 531-560; 7 (1900), 34-48, 252-
268, 461-481; 8 (1901), 560-578; 9 (1902), 636-657; 10 (1903), 441-465;
A. J. POLAK, Ueber Zeiteinheit in Bezug auf Konsonanz, Harmonie und
Tonalitit (1900); Theodor LIPPS, >Das Wesen der musikalischen Konsonanz
und Dissonanz,< in his Psychologische Studien (1885), 21905, 115-240 (trans-
lated by H. C. Sanborn: >The nature of musical consonance and disso-
nance,( in Psychological Studies, 1906); Max MEYER, The Musician's Arith-
metic (1929); Demar B. IRVINE, >>Towarda theory of intervals,< Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America, 17 (1946), 350-355; Paul C. BOOMSLI-
TER and Warren CREEL, >The long pattern hypothesis in harmony and
hearing,< Journal of Music Theory, 5 (1961), 2-31; Paul BOOMSLITER
and Warren CREEL, ,Extended reference: an unrecognized dynamic in
melody,< Journal of Music Theory, 7 (1963), 2-22.

evident difference !in pitch range. This special attribute of octave-

ness has been termed variously tonal brightness or Helligkeitt0,
,tone chroma'7 or pitch tint18. The more abstract concept of pitch
class19likewise dwells upon octaveness, though it tends to, stress
a theoretical absorption of octaves of tones .rather than any anal-
ysiils of its perceptual ramifica,tions. In addition to the declared
effectiveness of this >secolnd component<<in inducing an intuitive
sense of consonance in the presence of the super-perfect octave
ratios, the inherent perceptual quality of octaveness has been asso-
ciated with the iinteresting psychological phenomena of absolute
pitch and o'f synaes'thesia. Comparable significance has at times
also been ascribed to a hypothetical innate and unconscious per-
ceptual tracking of cycles of fifths, which generate different rath-
er than duplicate tones., as if the common pedagogic diagram of
the circle o'f fifths were to blossom forth into the real world. Here
the argument builds less on the objective evidence for a Law of
Nature, while in compensation it necessarily leans the more on
verbal fetishes and mystical suppositions20.
3.15 Some further declared psychological attributes appear to
supply names for the combined perceptual imprints of the pitch
and the loudness dimensions, in such fashion as again to differ-
entiate >>consonant<< responses to any relationships that are meas-
urable by simple ratios. One such attribute is tonal volume21,
16
Erich M. von HORNBOSTEL, ,tUber vergleichende akustische und
musikpsychologische Untersuchungen,< Beitrige zur Akustik und Musik-
wissenschaft, 5 (1910), 143-167; Geza RIEVSZ, Zur Grundlegung der Ton-
psychologie (1913) (translated by G. I. C. de Courcy: Introduction to the
Psychology of Music, 1953); Wolfgang KOHLER, >Akustische Untersuchun-
gen,<, Zeitschrift fiir Psychologie, 72 (1915); Heinrich SCHOLE, Tonpsycho-
logie und Musik-Asthetik (1930); Gerhard ALBERSHEIM, Zur Psychologie
der Ton- und Klangeigenschaften (1939); Hans Gerhard LICHTHORN, >>Zur
Psychologie des Intervallh6rens,< Dissertation: Hamburg (1962); Hans-Peter
REINECKE, Experimentelle Beitrige zur Psychologie des Musikalischen
Horens (1964).
17 A. BACHEM, >Tone height and tone chroma as two different pitch
qualities,<< Acta Psychologica, 7 (1950), 80-85.
I' Miecyslaw KOLINSKI, >Consonance and dissonance,< Ethnomusicol-
ogy, 6 (1962), 66-74; Miecyslaw KOLINSKI, >Recent trends in ethnomusicol-
ogy,< Ethnomusicology, 11 (1967), 1-24.
19 Milton
BABBITT, ?Twelve-tone invariants as compositional determi-
nants,(< Musical Quarterly, 46 (1960), 246-259; George PERLE, Serial Com-
position and Atonality (1962), 31972; Philip N. BATSTONE, >Multiple order
functions in twelve-tone music,(< Dissertation: Princeton (1965); Richard
TEITELBAUM, )>Intervallic relations in atonal music,< Journal of Music
Theory, 9 (1965), 72-127; Alien FORTE, )>The basic interval patterns,< Jour-
nal of Music Theory, 17 (1973), 234-273.
20
Jacques HANDSCHIN, Der Toncharakter (1948); Heinrich HUSMANN,
Einfiihrung in die Musikwissenschaft (1958).
21
Henry J. WATT, The Psychology of Sound (1971); James L. MURSELL,
The Psychology of Music (1937).

which is defined as a sense of precise proportional matching, akin
to the spatial congruity of proportioned geometrical patterns, de-
clared to function whenever lower pitches effectively absorb and
mask higher ones. Another has similarly been termed tonal weight
or Gewicht, perhaps the same as an equally hypothetical proper-
ty of extensity22. Apart from its reference to the affinity induced
by real coincidence of sounding constituents, the expression tonal
blending has also been defined more naively by the tautology ,a
seeming to belong together, to agree<23.The term tonal residue24
makes much of a declared coincidence among those high-pitched
extractions from interval resonances that remain after the aurally
effective harmonics have been artificially filtered out.
3.16 Unlike the physical and physiological aspects of itone and
of tone combinations described, which may or may not explain
the phenomenon of consonance, but which do indubitably exist
in the sound signal and in sensory response to it, such declared
psychological attributes share a weakness of verifiable demonstra-
tion, while their discussion appears to rely on more 'than a hint
of verbal imprecision which conceals their tautology. Their pro-
ponents seem first to name, and then to assert to be perceptually
real, one or another property arguably .associated with the phe-
nomenon of consonance response. That named property i's sup-
posed then to inhere in musical tone, in its reception or its trans-
mission by the ear, and/or in its perception. Inevitably any such
property is so described as to involve a relationship expressible in
simple number ratios. Thereupon the proponents turn about, to
claim that the resulting distillation of simple ratios, so furtunate-
ly >>discovered,, accounts for the judgment of consonance. Prop-
erly controlled experiment rarely supports the substance, the
validity, the perceptual role or the need to hypothesize such tonal
attributes.
3.17 Among more reliable measures of consonance that have
invited the attention of experimental psychology, the most impor-
tant is called tonal fusion, or Tonverschmelzung25, a phenomenon
n Carroll C.
PRATT, >Comparison of tonal distances,(( Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology, 11 (1928), 77-87; Max SCHOEN, The Psychology of
Music (1940).
23 C. F. MALMBERG, >The perception of consonance and dissonance,<
Psychological Monographs, 25#108 (1918), 93-133; Carl E. SEASHORE, Psy-
chology of Music (1938).
24 J. F. SCHOUTEN, ),The perception of
pitch,< Phillips Technical Review,
5 (1940), 286-294; J. C. R. LICKLIDER, >A duplex theory of pitch percep-
tion,(( Experientia, 7 (1951), 128-134.
25 Jean Laurent de BE2THIZY,
Exposition de la Thdorie et de la Pratique
de la Musique (1754); Jean Le Rond D'ALEMBERT, Elements de Musique, th4
orique et pratique (1759); Carl STUMPF, Tonpsychologie, 2 Bde. (1883-90),
Bd. II; A. FAIST, Versuche uiber Tonverschmelzung,< Zeitschrift fir Psy-
chologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 15 (1897), 102-131; Carl

which may be implied in some of the earliest definitions of the

term consonance26. The fusion criterion arises from demonstration
that where combinations, especially of pure tones, are heard, more
markedly by li,steners not skilled in differential musical judg-
ments, the tones comprising perfect intervals of simple ratio are
most often >fused,<<or perhaps confused, with each other, so that
they !seem Ito unite perceptually, and thus to be mistaken for sin-
gle tones. A difficulty attending fusion judgments is that some
combinations of highly complex ratio, including the minor second
and even smaller micro4intervals, although they are accordingly
classed as )>dissonant,<(appear to >fuse, in this respect almost as
well as Ithe >>best(<combinations27.
3.18 Despite the impressive accumulation of verified scientific
evidence in support of the Natural Law theory of consonance, and
of evidence lending itself to tabulation with exquisite mathemati-
cal precision, severe criticism has attended the general principle
from its inception, while numerous difficulties have been raised
as to each o'f its detailed formulations, and as to their corrola-
ries. Even where the acoustic and psychoacoustic data appear in-
controvertible, thoughtful objection has challenged the usual in-
terpretation that the concept of consonance in musical practice
and relevance refers to the same quality as the readily tunable
agreement or the unruffled sonorous resonance accounted for by
these data. Disconcerting specific contradictions abound that jus-
ti,fy such challenge, one such being the stubbolrn musical classifi-
cation of the perfect fourth as a dissonance in counterpoint. Li'ke
flaws of practical bearing continue to trouble those music theo-
rists who would otherwise be prone to accept happily the appar-
ent dictates of the exact sciences. Meanwhile, on theoretical
grounds involving a wider perspective of the art of music as deter-
mined by historical and cultural rather than by natural forces,
STUMPF, >Konsonanz und Dissonanz,< Beitrdge zur Akustik und Musik-

wissenschaft, 1 (1898). Wilhelm KEMP, >Methodisches und experimentelles
zur Lehre von der Tonverschmelzung,? Archiv fur die Gesamte Psychologie,
29 (1913), 139-257; Carroll C. PRATT, )Tonal fusion,(< Psychological Review,
41 (1934), 86-97.
26 EUCLID [3rd century B. C.], Introductio Harmonica, and CLJIONIDE
[2nd century A. D.], Sectio Canonis, in M. Meibom [editor], Antiqvae Mu-
sicae Avctores, t. 1 (1652); Charles-lfdouard RUELLE, L'Introduction Harmo-
nique de Cleonide (1884); AL-FARABI [872-950 A. D.], Kitabu L-Musiqi Al-
Kabir (Grand Traite de la Musique), in Rodolphe D'ERLANGER, La Musique
Arabe, t. 1, 2 (1930); Carl STUMPF, >Geschichte des Consonanzbegriffen,<<
Abhandlungen der Philosophischen-Philologischen Classe der Koniglich Ba-
yerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 21 (1909), 1-79.
27 Carroll C. PRATT, ,Some qualitative
aspects of bitonal complexes,<(
American Journal of Psychology, 32 (1921), 490-515; Austin M. BRUES,
))The fusion of non-musical intervals,<, American Journal of Psychology, 38
(1927), 624-638; Martha GUERNSEY, )The r61e of consonance and disso-
nance in music,(< American Journal of Psychology, 40 (1928), 173-204.

and eventually also on a more careful examination of what the
scientific data mean, it emerges that to explain the musical phe-
nomena consonance and dissonance by the Natural Law theory
is inherently untenable. Some of the more important discrepan-
cies from the Pythagorean rule of simple ratios are summarized
here.
4.00 Obstinate objections have ever been raised about the ques-
tion-begging judgment that the perfect intervals favored by the
Natural Law theory are indeed the most serviceable, the most ad-
mired, the most desirable or even the best acceptable harmonies
for musical practice.
4.01 As mentioned, the perfect fourth, noitably in relation to
the lowest tone of a complex, is consistently classified in music
as Idissonant, and in consequent need of resolution28.
4.02 Were its accounting for consonance to be accorded opera-
tional meaning, the Natural Law theory would seem to predict
that musical harmonies consisting exclusively of perfect intervals
ought to exhibit an unmistakable and surpassing sensory beauty.
It is a commonplace that they are instead regularly described as
empty, hollow and poor. In general they are taken to ibe linferior
to ithe ordinary triadic chords, which the theory admits only to a
lesser status, if it validates them at all, but which are unques-
tionably the preferred vehicles of traditional harmonic practice.
4.03 Traditional rules of harmony and counterpoint explicitly
proscribe parallel successions of perfect intervals, though with
the unaccountable exception of that same troublesome fourth
when it is not in the lowest placement. That this notorious ruling
relates to some more abstract quality than is presented concrete-
ly in sonorous events is plain from its inapplicability to unison
or octave parallels used >merely(( for ))doubling<,. It is difficult
to reconcile the standing proscription with the purportedly supe-
rior )>consonant,<status of favored combinations.
4.04 The traditional rules for harmony and counterpoint alike
regularly prescribe that dissonances be resolved, and further that
they be resolved wherever possible to imperfect consonances, rath-
er than to the supposedly >better, perfect combinationls. Now
the Law of Nature seems quite unable to account either for the
permissibility of dissonance in music, or, iif it be permitted, the
need for such dissonance to be resolved. That such resolution is
then best satisfied by second-rank or imperfect consonances there-
fore compounds the difficulties extremely.
28
Knud JEPPESEN, Counterpoint (1931) (translated by Glen Haydon,
1939); Walter PISTON, Harmony (1941).

4.05 Indeed, the recognized need for resolution appears thus

to arise independently of that Natural Law. At the least, it indi-
cates that that Law cannot stand as the sole determinant of audi-
tory judgment. The resolution relation also flatly contradicts the
Law's evaluation of the relative status of desirable intervals. Thus
at least some of the fundamental instructions for musical proce-
dures, all of them demonstrably supported through analysis of
the practices of leading composers over many centuries, contra-
vene the premise of an inherently superior status for those spe-
cial relationships expressible in the simplest number ratios.
4.06 Though their ratio indices, as most favorably interpreted,
lie beyond the initial stated range of >natural consonances,< the
imperfect consonances, notably the thirds and their combinations
into triadic chords, have in contrast been treated, almost since the
dawn of Western harmony and counterpoint, as by far the pref-
erable, the mosit admired and the most gratifying combinations.
That they were for long not so acknowledged in theory bespeaks
less any doubt among practising musicians and their audiences
as to their true service in making harmony than it reflects the phil-
osophic authority, its mystical cosmology included, of the vener-
able Pythagorean doctrine, which did not class thirds or their
complementary sixths as consonant relations at all.
4.10 That glaring conflict between theory and practice was
eventually rationalized29 by granting the thirds and sixths, with
'their octave extensions, the limited and provisional status they
still officially retain. To achieve that rationalization, their numer-
ical ratios were interpreted to be comprised within the index val-
ues 5 and 6, thus as just a little less >simple, than the numbers
1 through 4 by which the perfect intervals may be expressed, or
to which they can be reduced.
4.11 However, the prior notion of what constitutes mathemat-
ical >simplicity< has itself proven open to philosophic challenge.
For although the number magic embedded in the Pythagorean out-
look has from ancient times confined its manipulations to inte-
gers, surely values like n or V2 are quite as >natural,<simple and
elemental as integers for any mathematical rendering of the gen-
eral laws of the universe.
4.20 The formal elevation of the >>imperfect<( thirds and sixths
to consonant status thus represents a rationalizing rectification
of music theory, rather than a true change, either in musical prac-
tice or in psychoacoustic response. Nevertheless that single )ad-
vance, remains the sole >factual< basis for the later speculative
claims, first of a natural gradation among consonances from the
moist perfect to others of lesser acceptability, which those >imper-
29
Gioseffo ZARLINO, Le Istitutioni Harmoniche (1558).

fect, intervals indeed do not well exemplify, and then of an his-
torical evolution process that guides and induces an increasing ap-
preciation for those ,co'nsonant, indices that lie progressively
higher in the numerical series. There is no firm evidence that any
real change of response or of compositional treatment ever took
place, either in auditory perception or in musical judgment and
practice. Rather does this history record an overdue adjustment of
speculative theory to secular reality. The discrepancy that those
musical relationships still termed )imperfect(( are vastly preferred
to those designated as >>perfect,therefore represents a continuing
legacy of Zarlino's ingenious if ingenuous reasonings.
4.30 Upon this modification or extension of its classification,
the principle of .natural consonance,<< now declared to account
for the amended status of the just major third, required its the-
oretical ))derivation( from the assigned low ratio value 5:4. Cor-
respondingly, the just major triad was and is accounted for by
the ratios 6:5:4. However, it is inescapable that in musical prac-
tice, the minor third, necessarily thus arising from the ratio 6:5, is
as much in favor as the major, and indeed is inseparable from it,
as the major triad formula shows.
4.31 Yet if the germinal series of harmonic overtones, which the
above numerical indices may be said to represent, be prolonged
to infinity, nowhere can it generate that ratio 6:5 from its fun-
damental. Despite the intricate speculative reasonings that have
been accorded the problem, the unsupported minor third, and
more notably the common minor triad, cannot thus be shown to
originate in a Law of Nature at all. This failure of the theory to
explain one of only two fundamental sonorous structures entering
into traditional tonal harmony is often judged a fatal discrepancy
of the Natural Law theory30.
4.40 Looking more closely into the theoretical extension of
the purview of >natural consonance< to include the imperfect ma-
jor and minor thirds and their resultants, a serious question a-
rises as to how well their then requisite >just intonation<<values
match their actual renderings in musical practice. As measured
by the fine logarithmic unit called an ellis or cent, equal to 1/100
of an equally tempered half-step, the just major third of ratio 5:4
is equivalent in size to 386 ellis, and the just minor third of ratio
6:5 to 316 ellis. Now numerous precise measurements of intonation
criteria, of intonation practices among skilled performers of mu-
30Matthew SHIRLAW, ?The nature of the minor harmony,c Musical
Quarterly, 17 (1931), 509-524; J. TOLONEN, >>Mollisoinnun ongelma ja uni-
taarinen intervalli-ja sointutulkinte,< Dissertation: Helsinki (1969).

sic, and of intonation preferences among listeners to music31 uni-

formly contradict those predicted values.
4.41 Such measurements show, first, appreciably more latitude
or flexibility in intonation, for both the performance and the judg-
ment of those imperfect intervals, than for the better fixed values
of the perfect intervals.
4.42 Beyond that observation, and thus over and above their
notable flexibility, experimental evidence shows an unmistakable
convergence of the imperfect intervals iin practice, not towards
the predicted )ju!st(( values, but rather towards the decidedly com-
plex Pythagorean intonatio ratios, 81:64 or 408 ellis for the majo,r
third and 32:27 or 294 ellis for the minor third. Folr comparison,
in equal temperament, the size of the major third is 400 ellis and
that of the mino!r third 300 ellis. It may be remarked that the
much maligned artificial values of equal temperament provide
thirds that are not only well withiln the admissible range of flex-
ibility in intonation, but that are actually closer to the sizes fa-
vored in musical perception than are the >ideal< just thirds pre-
dicted and required by the Natural Law theory.
4.50 The observed latitude or flexible range in practice for the
imperfect intervals verifies dramatically, in negative fashion, the
unique service of the perfect intervals as accurate tuning stand-
ards. Thereby it emerges the more clearly how much that service
constitutes the primary reference of the Pythagorean definition of
consonance. Plainly the far less determinate variance of acceptable
intonation values for the >imperfect consonances< shows that Ithey
cannot provide comparable, reliable norms, and thus that they
cannot be judged )>consonant< in the same sense.
4.60 Curiously, closer analysis of available intonation data re-
veals that the just value of 386 ellis predicted for the major third
is indeed closely approximated, though not for a recognized con-
sonant quality, in the actual intonation of the >dissonanto dimin-
ished fourth. Likewise, the just value of 316 ellis foir the minor
third indeed occurs commonly, not for that interval, but for the
>dissonant<<augmented second.
4.61 Though theoretical paeans to the heavenly beauties of
just or >>pure<< intonation continue to be chanted, their claims ap-
pear to reflect chiefly the mysticail appeal of the law of simple
31 Carl
STUMPF and Max MEYER, )>Maassbestimmungen iiber die Rein-
heit consonanter Intervalle,(< Beitrdge zur Akustik und lMusikwissenschaft,
2 (1898), 84-167; J. MURRAY BARBOUR, )>The persistence of the Pythago-
rean tuning system,< Scripta Mathematica, 1 (1932), 286-304; J. MURRAY
BARBOUR, >Just intonation confuted,< Music & Letters, 19 (1938); 48-60;
J. MURRAY BARBOUR, Tuning and Temperament (1953); Norman CAZDEN,
)Pythagoras and Aristoxenos reconciled,<< Journal of the American Musico-
logical Society, 11 (1958), 97-105.

ratios, and the consequent philosophic difficulty that impedes com-

ing to terms with mere facts. That is why well-established re-
sults of intonation studies are either denied or ignored.
4.62 Yet it remains a hard irony that the Natural Law theory
of consonance, which relies so strongly on an elegant precision of
mathematical statement, proves to be undermined by carefully
measured evidence. The ,.jusit lintonation< principle required by
the theory has long been acknowledged by reputable students to
be a myth. And of course the exceedingly complex, indeed the in-
commensurable ratios of >>imperfect consonancese sounded in
equal temperament, which are multiples of the twelfth root of 2,
or about 1.059..., lend no comfort at all to the postulate of the
control of musical harmony by a Natural Law of cosmic signifi-
cance.
4.70 The principle of simple ratios among the lowest possible
integer values unfortunately allows no qualitative distinction to
be drawn between consonance and dissonance as categories. At
no point in an enumeration, as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9..., let us say
of the harmonic partials of a musical tone, can ilt be shown that
thus far doth gentle consonance reign, while beyond lieth only ugly
dissonance.
4.80 This difficulty over the source of a critical differential in-
vites further question as to whether a gradually incremental nu-
merical series can ever be said to reach unmistakable dissonance,
and moreover, suppossing it can, why such dissonance would find
any use or place in the beautiful art of music. Experience with the
real practice of traditional tonal music shows, contrary to the
absence of critical node, that not only is dissonance in music
deemed desirable and even essential, but that consonane and disso-
nance are quite sharply differentiated. They are markedly con-
trasted in an either-or relationshi,p, and they allow of no gradual
or imperceptible transition from one quality to the other. Dialecti-
cally, just because consonance and dissonance present them-
selves as polar opposites, they thereby pre-suppose each other. The
Natural Law theory of consonance therefore cannot account for
the very existence of dissonance, cannot account for its utilization
or its suitability in music, and cannot account for lits functional
opposition to consonance.
4.90 Pursuing the principle that simple ratios provide a natural
criterion for consonance soon proves that Nature is herself >out
of tune<<.That is the only reasonable conclusion from the many
theoretical puzzles encountered in dealing with index 7 of the inte-
ger series. By that index 7 is meant the seventh harmonic partial
of a resonant tone, or stated otherwise, a vibration frequency sev-
en .times that of the fundamental. This >>naturalsevenths surely

exists in Nature, but just as surely it is commonly judged to be nei-

ther consonant nor dissonant. Instead, it is deemed false, in that
it does not match any recognized musical scale degree.
4.91 Players of brass instruments obtain their pitches by so
controlling the tension of their lips as to evoke a desired overtone
from among a limited number of fundamentals. Among the over-
tones readily selected is that very seventh harmonic partial. Stu-
dent players must therefore learn to avoid it, because it creates a
relationship deemed badly out of tune. But if an undeniably natu-
ral harmonic can thus be declared out of tune, clearly Nature gives
way here to some prior principle determining the art of music, and
not the other way about.
4.92 Less well known but comparable indications may be ad-
vanced that brass instrument players similarly avoid also that fifth
harmonic supposed in theory to validate the >consonant(<status of
the just major third. Should their choice of that harmonic be una-
voidable, they >bend< or >>correct<( its intonatio,n, thereby in effect
tampering with virgin Nature. This practice again shows that the
claims advanced to justify the belated recognition of the >true<
or )>consonant<<maj'or third lack precision. But the )>natural sev-
enth( is nearly impolssible to correct adequately, while the sensed
need to do so must invalidate the presumption that musical rela-
tions are governed by natural phenomena3.
4.93 Some theorists, determined to adhere to the Natural Law
principle in defiance of the norms of mere musical practice, have
argued that the inverval called a >>naturalseventh,<cof ratio 7:4 or
969 ellis, does indeed obtain in music via its approximation, the
just minor seventh of 996 ellis, folr which it is very noticeably flat.
Building on so tenuous a claim, they further assert that, despite
our discomfort over its evident musical falsity, that >>naturalsev-
enth<<must be classed as not only a vallid, but also an agreeably
consonant relationship. They further contend that Nature thereby
proves ))consonant,<(not only its surrogate minor seventh, whose
)nearby<( size is indeed more than an eighth of a tone larger, but
especially the dominant seventh chord which contains it. On this
chain of reasoning is the dominant seventh chord shown to con-
stitute at worst the mildest of dissonances, or, viewed more fa-
vorably, as ),truly(<a natural consonance.
32
HUYGENS, op. cit.; Albert Joseph VIVIER, Traite Complet d'Harmo-
nie (1862), 51890; Pietro BLASERNA, La Teoria del Suono (1875); Carl
STUMPF, Die Anfdnge der Musik (1911); S. A. LUCIANI, >Una nuova inter-
pretazione del fenomeno degli armonici,<< Rivista Musicale Italiana, 20
(1913), 646-657; Dayton C. MILLER, The Science of Musical Sounds (1916);
Matthew SHIRLAW, The Theory of Harmony (1917); Joseph YASSER, A
Theory of Evolving Tonality (1932); Martin VOGEL, ,Die Zahl Sieben in der
spekulativen Musiktheorie,, Dissertation: Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-
Universitiit (1954).

4.94 Yet an argument that in so remarkable a fashion )>proves((
that the harmonic function called the dominant harmony, which
most urgently demands resolution in traditional tonality, ought
to require no resolution at all, merely by dint of re-labeling it
must remain less than convincing to the musician3.
>>colns,onant,(<
4.95 Intonation discrepancies of some other natural harmonic
partials, notably those of indices 11, 13 and 14, introduce difficul-
ties of the same order which have not been successfully ration-
alized. But even to require defense by such intricate calculations
of what should be instantly plain to the ear must beg the question
of the claimed determination of consonance by a Natural Law.
5.0 Should the Law of Nature be tested rigorously on olther of
its plausible corollaries, the outcome fails to support many of its
common interpretations. Those interpretations turn out not to rest
upon careful examination ,of ,incontrovertible scientific data, or
from a formulation in exact figures of observed phenomena and
of experimental results. Rather have they been taken on faith, and
relied oln uncritical, almost ritual repetition of what prove after all
to be highly speculative hypotheses and strained conclusions34.
5.1 For example, it is frequently asserted that Nature provides
us with the ready model of an extended major chord. That model
chord,is said to be made up of the natural harmonic overtones en-
gendered by any single resonant fundamental tone, or at least yield-
ed by its first six partials, which are assumed for the purpose to
be the most prominent in that series. Conversely, the >just( major
triad is said to be constituted by the indices 4, 5, 6 selected from
that series. Thus it is ostensibly proven why that triad is ordained
to serve as natural source for all musical harmony, now and for-
ever more.
5.2 Strangely, by the same supposition, it would follow that the
major six-four chord similarly arises naturally from the still lower,
and thus even more favorable, indices 3, 4, 5 of the same series.
By this argument, lit ought therefore to constitute an even better
>natural consonant harmony( than the root-based major triad. Yet
it is notorious that the six-four chord has been consistently treated
in music as a dissonance requiring resolution35.
5.3 Apart from the observed discrepancies in practice from
their required )>just((intonation values, discrepancies which chal-
lenge whether the major triads of real music properly conform to
their presumed harmonic series template, and apart from the
33 Charles MEERENS, Acoustique Musicale (1892); Llewellyn S. LLOYD,
The Musical Ear (1940).
34 Norman CAZDEN, >Musical consonance and dissonance,(< Dissertation:
Harvard University (1948).
5 Glen HAYDON, The Evolution of the Six-Four Chord (1933).

logical hurdle of accounting in comparable fashion for Itheir coom-

panion minor triads, for which no 'such template can be found,
experimental evidence shows that the ;initial claim about a natu-
ral source for the major triad represents more a plausible exercise
in verbal reasoning than an accurate description of auditory reality.
5.4 For if Ithree oscillators be tuned to produce pure sine-wave
vibrations at favorable mid-range frequencies, let us say of 400,
500 and 600 Hz, thus in the proportions 4:5:6, the result to the ear
is not the predicted major triad, not the >Chord of Nature,(< and
indeed not a chord at all. Instead, that result is perceived as a
single pitch, corresponding to that of a tone which is not even
physically present, with a frequency of 100 Hz, which would be the
fundamental of the series. Six such oscillators, tuned in frequency
proportions 1:2:3:4:5:6, sound in fact, not the extended major triad
whose marvelling praise seems the true object of the theory, but
like a single tone, lof a pitch matching its index 1. Moreover, the
values chosen for such demonstration need not be the favored
)>consonant( numbers cited, for the same fundamental piltch is per-
ceived when three oscillators are set to vibrate at 700, 800 and
900 Hz36.Thus the harmonic series lis not a chord, it does not sug-
gest a chord, it does not require that the art of music utilize
chords, triladic or other, and it does not provide the claimed model
for musical harmony.
5.5 Conversely, let a real rather than a fictitious C Major Triad
be sounded on a real musical instrument, or by a group of instru-
ments or volices, as notated in Fig. 4a. Fig. 4b >realizes, in nota-
tion the natural harmonic overtones theoretically produced in turn
by each constituent of that chord, mercifully carried out only as
far as the twelfth partial. Fig. 4c adds together the results which,
according to the stated Law of Nature, must be audible every time
that innocent major triad is sounded.
5.6 The case iis even worse than lit appears in normal staff no-
tation, for the parenthetic notes tin Fig. 4c show important depar-
tures in intonation from their indicated pitch placements. Hence
their sound would clash badly with others that appear to be in
ordinary unison wi'th them. The example is further over-simplifiied
in that no combination tones are shown37.
36
Harvey FLETCHER, )The physical criterion for determining the pitch
of a musical tone,( Physical Review, 23 (1924), 427-437; Stanley S. STE-
VENS and Hallowell DAVIS, Hearing (1938); Harvey FLETCHER, >>Pitch,
loudness and quality of musical tones,< American Journal of Physics, 14
(1946), 215-225; A. J. M. HOUTSMA and J. L. GOLDSTEIN, >>Thecentral
origin of the pitch of complex tones,<< Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, 51 (1972), 520-529.
37HUSMANN, Vom Wesen der Konsonanz; Armand MACHABEY, ,Disso-
nance, Atonalit6, Polytonalite,, La Revue Musicale, 12 # 116 (1931), 35-45.

Fig.4
- 4TT
~ r )e
(d l i I, c
1
"^ I
9i=tt
a In " -0
^
H~~~~,
II
1
5.7 It is difficult to accept the resulting conglomerate of fu-

riously beating, incompatible ingredients as the ultimate >natural<
source of sweetly consonant harmony in music.
5.8 Should the seemingly inoffensive major triad in Fig. 4a be
sounded linadvertently on an equally tempered piano, the true out-
come, were we to follow literally the prediction of the Natural
Law theory, far from revealing the awesome cosmic origin of love-
ly harmonious consonance in music, would instead >prove< that
harmony so horrendous that traditional music would be abolished
at once, because of ,its intolerabile assaults upon the human ear.
6.00 The Aris:toxenian theory dismilsses the Pythagorean ratios,
whether they be deemed demonstrable in Nature or merely specu-
lative theoretical constructs, on the ground that they are simply
irrelevant to the art of music. In the view of Aristoxenols, conso-
nance is plainly a judgment made by the musician's ear. Therefore
we must inquire of the musician, and not of abstract relations
among soundless numbers, in order to explain it. More positively,
the Aristoxenian criticism maintains that speculation about simple
number ratios leaves out of account those musically relevant cri-
teria which do guide and control the ear's judgment. The musician's
practice and understanding are held to be directed and estab-
lished, not through some abstract regulation enforced by a cosmic
arithmetic, but by the accumulated procedures of his art38.
6.10 While the Aristoxenian approach ,is far less widespread
than the Pythagorean, and while for historical reasons it has en-
gendered far less discussion or analysis in the theoretical litera-
ture, it conforms readily toi the experience and to the unformula-
ted but instinctive inclination of the musician. It has the specific
38
ARISTOXENOS, The Harmonics (ca. 400 B. C.) (translated with notes
by Henry S. Macran, 1902); Johannis de GARLANDIA [ca. 1250 A. D.] )De
musica mensurabili positio,<( in Edmond de COUSSEMAKER, Scriptorum
de Musica Medii Aevi Nova Series, t. 1 (1864), 97-117; Nicola VICENTINO,
L'Antica Musica Ridotta alla Moderna Prattica (1555); Girolamo MEI, Let-

virtue of making allowance for a flexibility of intonation variants

in practice, such as are known to obtain in musical performances,
such as are not therefore acknowledged in routine tabulations of
theoretical values, and -such as are not explicable by the more me-
chanical and thus less pliable formulas derived from numerical
calculations.
6.20 Philosolphically, the Aristoxenian position, which seeming-
ly stresses intuitive vagary rather than properly scientific objectiv-
ity, indeed begins rather with a more genuine observation of the
musical reality to which it pertains. In contrast, the outlook of
the Law of Nature is germinated, not by a rigorous examination
of how things are in music, but rather by an abstract hypothesis
of how things ideally ought to be. Aristoxenos examines the mun-
dane priinciples of music that exists on earth, whereas the Pythag-
oreans explore what musical principles would be ordained in those
heavens where just ratios dwell. The time is long past since ad-
vocates of the Natural Law can pretend to a more solid grounding
in scientific method, merely because their diagrams, calculations
and findings happen to be couched in ever so impressive numeri-
cal tabulations. For those numerological formulations prove to be
less than scientific analogs of the astrological formulas with which
they are historically linked.
6.30 >Ajudgment of the earo seems a more inviting as well as a
moire credible explanation for the phenomenon of consonance than
abstract mathematical computations. Those current conditions of
music study which stress pragmatically how to do it more than
why tend anyhow to discourage speculative linquiry, and to seize
upon indications of its remoteness to increase suspicion of its pos-
slible benefit. That su,spicion coincides today with a decreasdng em-
phasis on the intricacies of systematic music theory in particular
and on any more expansive pslilosophical probing or intellectual
rationale in general. Meanwhile, the advent of twentieth century
treatments of musical harmony has called into serious question
the now somewhat quaint and parochial insistence on the unique
validity of ))natural< formulas, which are the more readily suspect-
ed to constitute transparent rationalizations for the older tradi-
tional practice.
ters on Ancient and Modern Music, 1572-1581 (translated and edited by
Claude Palisca, 1960); Vincenzo GALILEI, Dialogo della Musica Antica et
della Moderna (1581); Johann Adolphe SCHEIBE, Eine Abhandlung von
den Musikalischen Intervallen und Geschlechten (1739); John Frederick
LAMPE, The Art of Musick (1740); D. Antonio EXIMENO, Dell'Origine e
delle Regole della Musica (1774); Louis LALOY, Aristoxene de Tarente et la
musique de l'antiquite (1904); Claude PALISCA, >Scientific empiricism in
musical thought,< in H. H. Rhys [editor], Seventeenth Century Science and
the Arts (1961).

6.40 In its initially descriptive orientation, in its taking as pri-
mary the observed phenomena and the habitual procedures of an
existing system of music-making, the Aristoxenian view of musical
relations approaches the outlook of the Systemic theory, dis-
cussed below. Thus, while it admits a flexibility and a relativity in
the processes of musical art, such as cannot be reconciled with the
more rigid Pythago,rean precepts, the position first advocated by
Aristoxenos does not support the notion that musical consonance
is or can be established by the intuitive fiat or the arbitrary sup-
position of creative individuals39.
6.41 Such self-ordained declaration of whatever be adjudged
consonant )>bythe sovereign Will of the composierr<indeed neatly
evades any requirement of reliable evidence that it is effective, of
any referent mo,re useful than a vague verbal label, or of any clear
criterion for distinguishing between what is pronounced cons,o-
nant and whatever else may be named as some other real or im-
aginary quality. Though consonance and dissonance may thus be
disposed of negatively, as terms that thenceforth become meaning-
less. it is difficult to accept that their arbitrary discard explains
anything at all. The Aristoxenian view of a judgment secundem
auditem is fortunately of more rewarding substance and implica-
tion.
6.50 A more worthy approach to consonance that 'may be e-
quated superficially to the Aristoxenian view is the supposition of a
self-sufficient Gestalt principle. It recognizes a general psycholog-
ical propensity to form configurations, and such configurations
may consequently also be presumed to underlie and to explain the
procedures of musical harmony. While the Gestalt theory's classic
>>figurevs. ground< concept has hardly been pursued in this connec-
tion, some interest has focussed on treating traditional tonality as
the necessary musical reflection of the inherent psychological re-
quirement for rational musical form and organization. Analyses
devoted to deriving structural levels from a hypothetical Ursatz
are of this order. Positing just such an abstract rationale inhering
in lideal forms, the dichotomy of dissonance as tension vs. conso-
nance as its release has rightly been associated with the more overt
opposition of the dominant and the tonic poles of the tonality re-
lation40.
39Alois HABA, Von der Psychologie der Musikalischen Gestaltung (iiber-
gesetzt von J. Lbwenbach, 1925); Alois HABA, Neue Harmonielehre (1927);
Arnold SCHONBERG, Harmonielehre (1911), 31922, Ernst KRENEK, Uber
Neue Musik (1937).
40 Francois-Joseph FfTIS, Traite Complet de la theorie et de la pratique
de l'harmonie (1844), 41849; Moritz HAUPTMANN, Die Natur der Harmonik
und der Metrik (1853); Hugo RIEMANN, >Musikalische Logik,< Dissertation
(1873); Hans MERSMANN, Angewandte Musikisthetik (1926); Hans KLOTZ,

N. CAZDEN, CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE, IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168
148
6.51 So abstract a Idialectic is the more persuasive because it is
undoubtedly founded upon thoughtful generalization of musical
practice and experience in recent art music of Western European
provenance. Iit becomes less convincing on examination, more par-
ticularly in an ethnomusiocological perspective.
6.52 Philosophically, the supposition of an immanent, pre-mu-
sical logic or categorical imperative of fo,rm, to be identified with
specific manifestations of the tonality function, seems quite as mys-
tical as the Pythagoirean metaphor that portrays a cosmic signifi-
cance in musical ratios.
6.53 It is further highly improbable that the conditions formu-
lated ,in such general terms for the Hegelian dialectic just happen
to coincide with those very time-bound schoolbook precepts of
mid-nineteenth-century harmony which they were designed to ex-
plain and to justify, and none other.
6.54 The supposition of a merely general proclivity towards
forming perceptual configurations further faills to account for the
striking evidence favoring the Natural Law theory. For the psy-
choacoustic phenomena offered in support of that theory must
have siome relevance. However faulty may have been their inter-
pretatilons, the facts on which the theory lis founded cannot be made
to disappear. Consequently those facts must remain in some sense
the indispensable material support and condition for any and all
musical Gestalt principles.
6.55 Increasing study of .music ,and of its history on a world
scale, rather than of Western European harmonic practices alone,
suggests that the stated immanent principle of ten,sion-release, if
presumed to become manifest inevitably as tonality function, and
to be embodied precisely 'in the form of the resolution tendency
present in triadic harmonic progressions, is by no meanls universal
or eternal, as would be expected of so pervasive and inescapable
an irnner logic.
6.56 But suppose that the declared Gestalt prin,ciple were to
be defined linstead in ,so abstract a fashion Ithat it did meet the re-
quirement of universality. It would then prove so diffuse and so
general as no longer to help elucidate the specific and recognizable
features of the tonal functionls whence the theory emerged.
6.57 In short, if the term Itonality be stretched to encompass
any and .all ways of organizing and dealing with imusical tones, as
has happened in many an opinionated essay sort of writing, that
>Uber die Pragnanz akustische Gestaltung als Grundlage fur die Theorie
des Tonsystems,<( Dissertation: Frankfurt a. Main (1927); Siegfried NADEL,
>Zur Psychologie des Konsonanzerlebens,<, Zeitschrift fiur Psychologie, Abt.
1, 101 (1927), 33-158; MURSELL, op. cit.

term thereby loses any verifiable reference to the particular char-
acteristics of whatever musical practice ilt was intended to eluci-
date.
6.58 The human mind does indeed show a proclivity towards a
rational and dialectical structuring of experience. But the form
and the Isubstance alike of the configuratilons thereby obtained are
determined, not by this general proclivity, but rather by its hilsto-
ry, by the real conditions of its accumulated experience. In simi-
lar fashion is the human mind endowed with a general capaab,ility
for language, yet any ,specific language lis learned.
6.60 In lits classic statement by Arilstoxenos, the reasoned ob-
jection to the inadequacy of the Pythagorean equation of conso-
nance with simple ratio!s approaches the Systemic view. For it de-
scribes some of those specific features of the ancient Greek music
system which set the real framework for the understanding of con-
sonance.
The mere sense-discrimination of magnitudes is no part of the
general comprehension of music... Mere 'knowledge of magni-
tudes does not enlighten one as to the functions of ithe tetra-
chords, or of the notes, or of the differences of the genera, or,
briefly, the differences of simple and compound intervals, or
the distinction between modulating and non-mo,dulating scales,
or the modes of melodic construction, or indeed anything else
of the kind41.
The persuasiveness of that critical polsition is increased by its con-
formity to the real experience and concerns lof the musician, pro-
vided the historical and the culture-area relativity of that experi-
ence be recognized.
6.70 The chief objections to !the Aristoxenian view that may be
raised are directed towards its inadequate consideration of those
valid data which do support the Natural Law doctrine. Thus the
theory does not really present a convincing explanation of the con-
sonance phenomenon at all; it merely isidelsteps the question. If
consonance be a judgment of the ear, why does the ear, demon-
strably and consistently, choose to identify a special quality of
consonant agreement in certain relationships and not in others?
6.80 Thus the theory does not answer to the remarkable coinci-
dence between those relationships which the musician's ear actual-
ly deems ),consonant,<( in 'the sense of easily tunable values, and
their succinct renderings as ratios of simple integers. It merely
refuses to entertain the reasonable supposition that .simple ratios
have some critical bearing on that judgment. Yet it seems improb-
able that so impressive an observed connection results entirely
41
Henry S. MACRAN,The Harmonics of Aristoxenos (1902).

from chance. To then relegate the question to some vague and in-
determinate habituation, arising out of causes ,unknown or un-
knowable, or perhaps to reduce the issue to the possibly capricious
intuitions of individuals who may themselves be uncertain either of
causes or of ends, hardly seems an appropriately philosophic re-
sponse to the cogent question, what makes musical harmony sound
harmonious?
7.000 The Systemic theory of consonance and dissonance rep-
resents in some measure a reconciliation of the Pythagorean prem-
ise of simple ratios with the Ari!stoxenian insistence on the pri-
macy of musical judgment. It supports a respectful attitude and
interest on the part of the musician towards those undeniable data
and measurements that appear to confirm an objective source in
natural phenomena for the )judgment of the ear<. At the same time
it recognizes the equally objective evidence of known musical
usages which seem to, depart from the stated criteria of that Natu-
ral Law at every turn, and which indeed seem incommensurable
with its premises.
7.010 Simply stated, the Systemic position grants that a s,pe-
ciallproperty of readily tunable agreement among tones arises when-
ever their psychoacoustic relationship, quite apart from any mu-
slical context, can be expressed in simple ratios. But in this view
it does not therefore follow that those specific musical treatments
or relationships designated as consonant and dissonant functions,
and operating within the real common practice of traditional West-
ern harmony, derive from that property of tunable agreement.
Hence, while a Natural Law singling out some special quality,
hitherto termed >consonance,, may well be valid, the musical un-
derstanding of the nature and the handling of consonance and dis-
sonance may have quite another bearing. The Systemic theory may
thus be regarded as dualist, in proposing that where two such
diverse referents are indicated, clarity may be advanced by identi-
fying the concepts by distinctive names.
7.020 The classic formulation of such a dual approach was of-
fered by Carl Stumpf.42 Stumpf accepted that a special psychoa-
coustic quality, for which he retained the term consonance, rests in
some manner on natural phenomena that are expressible in simple
ratios. But he believed Ithis quality to be applicable only to two-
-tone combinations, and to those only when they were separated
from their roles in musical progressions. Meanwhile, in his view,
the strong opposition between consonance .and dissonance ,in ac-
,tion, made manifest in the familiar need for the resolution of dis-
isonance, did not iseem to follow from that Natural Law, but rather
42
Carl STUMPF, >Konsonanz und Konkordanz,? Beitriige zur Akustik
und Musikwissenschaft, 6 (1911), 116-150.

from some independent cause. Observing that this independent con-
cept of functional harmony, and specifically the polarity of tonic
and dominant centers that constitutes the tonality principle, was
fundamental to the real practice of the Western art of music,
Stumpf thereupon held that as soon as combinations of more than
two tones are involved, a different level of musical respo,nse a-
rises, on which operate the more complex relationshipis amorng
chords.
7.021 Thus Stumpf regarded ))Konsonanz,, and ))Dissonanz( less
as elemental than as merely elementary phenomena, and he be-
lieved that neither therefore had direct bearing on the art of music.
He observed that, on the contrary, the practice of traditional musi-
cal harmony proper involved, not two-tone intervals of theoretical
purity sounded in isolation, but chordal entities, and more notably
progressions of chords. Appropriate to this higher level of chord ac-
tion, new laws could be expected to arise, which had then best be de-
duced by examining actual harmonic practice in music. And such
laws would not then be accounted for by the raw properties of >con-
sonant< agreement that might be effective on a simpler level. To dif-
ferentiate these levels, which he distinguished as Konsonanzemp-
findung and Harmnoniegefiihl,Stumpf proposed that the terms co,n-
cordance and discordance be applied to the embodiments of chord-
al action that were perceived to operate on the higher level of
functional harmony.
7.030 A comparable dualism of terminology appears in a num-
ber of other discussions which, dn one or another fashion, recog-
nize the distinction thus formulated by Stumpf. Among the dis!tinc-
tive terms proposed, the following may be tabulated, with the first
group identifying the elemental level of readily tunable agreement,
judged dependent upon Natural Law criteria, and the second iden-
tifying rather the operational dynamics of harmonic progressions
in traditional tonal music43:
43 Alexandre EItienne CHORON et J. Adrien de la FAGE, Nouveau Manuel
Complet de Musique, ou encyclopedie musicale (1836-1839); Abrama BASE-
VI, Introduzione ad un Nuovo Sistema d'Armonia (1862), traduction fran-
qaise par A. Delatre: Introduction i un Nouveau Systeme d'Harmonie, 1865);
F. A. RENAUD, Le Principe Radical de la Musique et la Tonalite Moderne
(1870); Wilhelm WUNDT, Grundzuge der Physiologischen Psychologie (1874),
2 Bde., 21880; Carl STUMPF, Tonpsychologie, Bd. 2 (1890); Richard HEN-
NIG, Die Charakteristik der Tonarten (1897); Alfred JONQUItRE, Grund-
riss der Musikalischen Akustik (1898); Rudolf LOUIS und Ludwig THUILLE,
Harmonielehre (1907), 31910; Ernst KURTH, Die Voraussetzungen der Theo-
retischen Harmonik (1913); Alberto GENTILI, Nuovo Teorica dell'Armonia
(1925), 31949; GUERNSEY, op, cit.; Leonhard DEUTSCH, ))Ganzheitsbetrach-
tung und Teleologie in der Musikerziehung und Musiktheorie,<< Zeitschrift
fur Musikwissenschaft, 12 (1930), 418-429; Edwin von der NULL, >Die Ent-
wicklung der modernen Harmonik,< Dissertation: Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univer-
sitit (1931).

I II [Source]
Euphonie Dynamie Choron, de la Fage

Eufonia Dinamia Basevli
Consonance physi- Coonsonanceestheti- Renaud
que que
Konsonanz - Dis- Harmonlie - Dishar- Wundt
sonanz monie
Konsonanz - Dis- Konkordanz - Dis- Stumpf
isonanz koirdanz
Konsonanzemp- Harmoniegefiihl Stumpf
findung
Konsonanz Objectiv, Harmonie Subje)ktiv,
Konsonanzgefiihl Harmoniegefiihl iHennig
Dissonanz Auflosiungbedirfnis Jonquie&re
akustischer harmonischer
Konisonanz - Dis- Konsonanz- Dis- Louiis, Thui,lle
sonanz sona,nz
Dissonanzkonstatie- Dissonanzbehand- Kurth
ren lung
consonanza acustica consonanza ;armoni- Gentili
ca
Sensorial conso- Aesthetic consonance Guernsey
nance
Binfach - Kompli- Harmoniefiihrung Deutsch
ziert
akustische Konso- mu'slikalische Kon- Null
nanz 'sonanz
7.040 The dual hypothesis responds well to a major Idilemma

of the Natural Law theory, whereby, inevitably, that theory entalils
the postulate of a graduated decreased in ))degree of consonance<
that matches inversely the increase of integer values contained in
the ratios of intervals. As compared with the known polarity of
consonant and dissonant moments, that supposition of a continu-
ous gradation cannot account for the decisive point at which dis-
sonance may begin. Neither can it predict that dissonance would
arise at all; nor that, should it arise, it ought to be included in the
art of music; nor again that, were it so included, it would require
handling in determinate ways.

7.041 Inquiring further into that difficulty, not only does the
meaning of dissonance as a disti,nct category of relationship disap-
pear, and thereby make equally uncertain any useful reference for
the term >natural consonance,<, but in any detailed evaluation of
the presumed series of gradations, the usual understanding of mu-
sical interval as a pitch relationship its also breached. For the psy-
choacoustic qualities that affect such gradation of >>consonance,re-
sponse are found to involve far more than can be subsumed by the
neat ratios abstracted from frequency or overtone indices alone.
Degree of >agreement,<,in this sense, is found to hinge, at least in
part, on the register, the ,spacing, the overall and the relative loud-
ness, and *the,timbre, among other !sounding phenomena, of what
were initially taken for intervals just between pitch placements.
Evaluation of the degree of such >>agreement<iis further discov-
ered to depend upon and often to be marred by enveloping fluctua-
tions tin steady state, like ,the vibrato, to which even lisolated ,>in-
tervals<<may be subject. It is likewise affected by a host of archi-
tectural and electroniic influences on reverberation patterns, and
again by inharmonic constituents of tone.
7.042 Thus, almost in revenge for the stress placed by the Na-
tural Law theory on meticulous objective measurement of isolated
sonorous events, it transpilres that no valid descriptions or demon-
strations of Ipsychoacoustic responses to such events are possible
unless the totality of their conorete sonority in all its multiple 'di-
mensions be stringently set forth. It follows that, beyond the known
efficacy of simple integer ratios for inducing a recognition of tun-
ahbleagreement in generalized pitch intervals, the concept of >na-
tural consonance,<<'taken tin this more concrete sounding reference,
'must necessarily admit of an almost infinite gradation of !subtle
degrees, which may be differentiated by criteria which are not even
rspecified or measured when stated as abstractions solely of their
pure-tone frequency ratios or harmonic partial indices.
7.043 One example of the resulting discrepancy has often been
noted in criticism of the beat theory of consonance. The >>disturb-
,ances<,of sonorous smoothnesis produced by the beats of the just
tmajor third c - e, shown tin Fig. 5a, 5b, 5c, when in these. registers,
seem to approximate closely the beats of the major 'second c' - d',
'shown iin Fig. 5d, 5e, 5f, 5g, in iits higher ranges. Nevertheless the
beat theory perforce classifies the third as consonant and the sec-
ond as dilssonant".
7.044 It becomes plain that for all its i,nvocation of rel,iable
scientific demonstration and its formula,tion in elegant mathemat-
ical equations, the classification of what is defined as >relative
consonance<, by the hypothesis of the declared Natural Law proves
" Carl STUMPF, Konsonanz und Dissonanz (1898).

Fig. S
a b c d e f
beats: 33 66 132 16 32 64 128
no more than a rationalization and a justification for previous-

ly determined judgments. At the same time, the abstraction of
that definition from the real psychoacoustic conditions that affect
judgments of gradation prevent that hypothesis from explaining
the very properties to which in theory it was dedicated.
7.050 On the ground of the inescapable contradictions resulting
from carelessly stretching the concept of readily tunable agreement
to encompass the musical funct'ions consonance and diss,onance -
and that stretching is the essence of the Natural Law theory - I
have proposed45that, however valid and demonstrable are the psy-
choacoustic phenomena on which that theory is founded, not only
-do those phenomena fail to match the observed action of conso-
nant and dissonant momenlts iin musical usage, but even were such
moments to be indentified with concrete sonorous qualMities,that
action cannot be predicated of common intervals or chord desig-
nations or by their abstracted ratios at all. In short, the properties
consonance and dissonance do not and cannot apply to intervals.
7.051 Moreover, because the hypotheslis of simpl,ioity -of ratio
does not take into account the totality of the psychoacoustic phe-
nomena presented even by isolated sonorous events, the Natural
Law theory likewise fails to establish its implied gradation of >)de-
grees of consonance<<.In order to take proper account of the total-
ity of psychoacoustic factors that can and do i,nfluence the very
vivid sense and instant recognition of the overall sonority of iso-
lated tones or of their aggregates, I have advanced folr their classi-
fication and gradation the appropriately distinctive term euphony.
7.052 This proposed alternative concept of sonorous euphony
varying in value or degree, neither requires nor implies any diamet-
ric opposite, in the way the term consonance now commonly both
requires and implies iits polar opposite dissonance. The concept of
euphony does allow for and encourage detailed study and careful-
ly descriptive evaluations of the kaleidoscopic subtleties of grada-
tion presented by real, sounding psychoacoustic events. Thus it
encompasses the relevant and differential degrees of blending, fu-
,sion and coincidence among fundamentals, partials, combination
45 Norman CAZDEN, ?Tonal function and sonority in the study of harmo-
ny,c Journal of Research in Music Education, 2 (1954), 21-34.

tones and inharmonics. It includes within its purview the ob-
served mutual support or masking among the constituents of sono-
rities. It embraces also the presence or the relative freedom from
beats, tremulous reiterations, ,intermittent disturbances or other
fluctuations of sonorous envelope, which have hitherto been ig-
nored, or which have been attributed, with so much resulting dis-
tress, to more abstract distillations or reductions of such sonori-
ties. Euphony serves well as a term with positive yet neutral con-
notations, conveying none of the value judgments embedded in the
concepts consonance and dissonance.
7.053 Scaling by the criterion of compositte sonorous euphony
therefore postulates no automatic bearing of the sonorous consti-
tution of a given auditory event upon the mus,ical action of conso-
nant and dissonant moments in the course of tonal harmonic pro-
gressions. Any such bearing, any presumed dependence of conso-
nant ior dissonant moment on the sonorous euphony of that mo-
ment, would then have to be verified and shown to be invariable.
What proves in fact to be demonstrable, surprisingly, is indeed a
negative influence, in :that the maximum euphony potential of the
perfect intervals appears unfavorable to their effective constitu-
tion either of consonant or of dissonant moments.
7.054 But in principle, euphony refers rather to the overall psy-
choacoustic quality of a sonority i.solated from any Imusical con-
text. It pertains thus to its more elementary or pre-musical poten-
cy, describing thus any direct psychoacoustic response to the raw
matter presented by a sound environment that has not yet been
bent to the needs of human art. While thus specified to embrace
also those numerous concrete aspects of such sonorit,ies that are
not usually comprehended under the abstractions notes, pitches
or interval,s, the concept of sonorous euphony does absorb the ini-
tial Pythagorean meaning of the dependence of a special sense of
tunable >consonant, agreement upon simple number ratios. How-
ever, including this phenomenon as one factor affecting sono-
rous euphony explicitly sets the limiting proviso that such agre-
ement does not thereby account for what happens in music, but
rather for what happens independently of musical relations pro-
per, and indeed, for what happens before music begins. In this way,
the )>lawof simple ratiosa is at once held valid and qualified. It is
validated as an explanation of tuning procedure, but it is not then
dragged in to account further folr the music that follows after the
instruments are in tune.
7.060 With euphony thus distinguished, and defined as a com-
posite of all those psychoacousltic criteria capable of affecting a
gradation of 'isolated sonorities, the terms consonance anld disso-
nance proper may be reserved instead for those particular musi-
cal distinctions observed in the practice of Western tonal music,

and which exhibit in that practice their own systemic functions and
interactions. By thus differentiating euphonious value from the
more complex level of function within a particular !systemic prac-
tice, the numerous discrepancies and contradictions that have no-
toriously haunted investigations of the >consonance problem, can
be overcome. The critical distinction to be observed for their def-
initions is that, unlike degrees of euphony, the musical functions
which the terms consonance and dissonance have been called upon
to iidentify do not present themselves primarily as sonorous 'struc-
tures, but as consonant or dissonant moments or forces in action.
7.061 It may then further be observed that those consonant
and dissonant moments are neither directly dependent upon nor
commensurable with the degree of euphony presented by the so-
norous structures by which they are expressed. Rather does a neg-
ative juncture appear, in that, for example, a high degree of per-
ceptual fusion, of purity or of superlative blending, far from prov-
ing aesthetically desirable, seems to frustrate the identifiable cri-
teria needed for harmonies in motion. As a result, just because of
their eu,phonious purity in the abstract, the musical attractiveness
of perfect fifths, let us say, during tonal progreslsions, seems not
to equal the potential for satisfying harmonious action offered by
major and minor triadic chords. For the same reason, ocarina or-
chestras, such as might afford ,ideal harmonies composed of near-
ly pure tones, are not normally welcomed therefore, nor regarded
as optimum vehicles for sensuous auditory pleasure in Western mu-
sic.
7.070 If consonance and dissonance proper are understood thus
to refer to the dynamics of musical function, rather than to the
static psychoacoustic qualities that may inhere in sonolrities iso-
lated from musical contexts, it follows that those terms do not de-
scribe or apply usefully to the sonorous constitution of tones or of
tone aggregates, but rather to the action that occurs during pro-
gressions from one harmonic moment 'to another46. In brief, by
this criterion, there is no such thing as a consonant iinterval or
chord, or a dissonant interval or chord. In this sense, Fig. la iabove
shows, not consonant relationships, but interval abstractions who,se
euphony fosters their readily tunable agreement. And in the same
sense, Fig. lb, Ic and ld offer meaningless statements not sub-
ject to operational verification. Conversely, in theory, any sono-
rity whatever may serve in traditional tonal harmony to fulfill ei-
ther a consonant olr a dissonant function.
7.080 The functions of consonant :and dissonant .moments may
be identified as respectively the Istable and the active poles of the
resolution relationship. Consonance and dissonance alike thus re-
46
CAZDEN, >Musical consonance and dissonance.(

fer to moments less dependent on what harmonies are, meaning
by this their concrete sonorous constitution and their resultant de-
gree of euphony, than on what those harmonies do47.
7.081 Thus, as the instances Ishown in Fig. 2 above briefly ex-
emplify, dcissonance by no means signifies a responsive judgment
of pitch combinations that sound harsh, ugly or disagreeable. It
identifies rather the functional moment of any sonorous event that
is expected to resolve, while the moment to which it ultimately re-
solves is then deemed consonant. Should the framework for the
normative expectations of this kind not be piresent, or should the
apparent resolution tendencies and outcomes be thwarted consist-
ently, as may happen in some compositional styles of twentieth
century art musiic, neither consonance nor dissonance can be said
to exist.
7.082 Thereby arises the paradox that, in much )cdissonant har-
mony,< the true difficulty that confronts ready musical understand-
ing and response does not result from its oft-declared saturation
with unbridled >>dissonance,(< but rather from the opposite, from
a pervasive and disorienting absence of the functional criteria nec-
essary to the recognition of dissonant action.
7.090 But lif resolution moment is understood to be a function
rather than a thing, lit follows that in traditional tonal music, an
ordinary C Major Chord is properly to be judged and declared dis-
sonant when cast in the key of F, as at* dinFig. 6a. And,in the same
sense, even a single tone may engender that urgent expectation of
resolution that is the essence of dissonance. The last 'statement
may readily be tested by sounding the passages ishown in Fig. 6b
or 6c with a prolonged pause inserted at the points marked*. In
Fig. 6b at x it may also be seen how a perfect octave relationship
may provide the dissonating moment of a conventional appoggia-
tura.
7.100 When so understood as referring to dynamic functions,
clearly the terms consonance and dissonance cannot serve to de-
.scribe or to be predicated of any natural properties of tones or of
their aggregates. Therefore they cannot be said to arise from a Na-
tural Law of eternal and universal validity, immutable and inesca-
pable, as has been claimed. However, neither are responses to con-
sonant or dis!sonant moments arbitrary or willful, or subject to the
uncertain judgments of self-suffioient individual taste or desire.
So demonstrates the uniformity of responses tlo such linstances as
are aited in Fig. 6.
47 Norman CAZDEN. >>Thesystemic reference of musical consonance re-
sponse,(( International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 3
(1972), 217-242.

158 N. CAZDEN, CONSONANCE AND DISSONANCE, IRASM 11 (1980), 2, 123-168
Fig. 6a
[J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto 2 ]
A I IL I I I
^ t F r rrX X
d d d d
Fig. 6b
[ W.A.Mozart: Sonata for Piano, K.332 ]1
x *
Allegro
F&
ig5cl . r
Fig.6c
*d
4 l. b .. 4 b bo . So)

7.101 Rather are these functional moments akin to gramnmatical
constructions, in that their hallmarks are among the learned re-
sponses peculiar to a speci!fic system of music-making. Like a ver-
bal language, such a music system arises and develops during the
history of a music culture, using the term culture in its anthropol-
ogical sense. The expectations involved in recognizing and respond-
ing to consonant and dissonant moments thus become embedded
in the systemic set, in the built-in complex of familiar forms, nor-
mative expectations and habits that are common to members of
a given human society duning a definable historical period.
7.110 Musical consonance and dissonance therefore arise, not
from Nature, but from ,)second nature,48. Specifically, consonant
and dissonant 'moments function within the framework of the to-
nal Western music of recent centuries. There they evoke standard
and predictable conditioned responses, among people nurtured
within that system of music-making, in the same way as they be-
come acculturated to speaking and understanding their native lan-
guage.
7.111 However, the Western music system findeed pervades a
very much larger culture area than do verbal languages. Thereby
is fostered among its posses!sors the illusion that the system to
which they have become habituated is somehow )>natural<(and in-
evitable. Because it is trans-national, it is the more readily mis-
taken foir universal. This myopic notion that a particular set of
conditioned predilections and culture-bound habits are and must
be universal in their scope and applicability has long been overdue
for discard.
7.112 The Western music system may even be identified prop-
erly ,as the system admitting and making expressive, emic use of
consonant and dissonant functions. But with equal validity, 'de-
pending on which of its interlinked aspects are singled out for at-
tention, it may be called the diatonic system, the major-minor
system, the ,tonality or tonal system, or the system characterized
by integrated progressions rather than simple sonorous succes-
sions for its harmony.
7.120 Within the Western music system thus identified, con-
sonance and dissonance are further discovered to operate at three
48 Theodor
BILLROTH, Wer ist Musikalisch? (21896); Joseph PETERSON,
>>Afunctional view of consonance,< Psychological Review, 32 (1925), 17-33;
Christian Paul HEINLEIN, )>An experimental study of the Seashore Conso-
nance Test,< Journal of Experimental Psychology, 8 (1925) 408-433; Robert
FRANCES, ,>Sur quelques formes modernes de syntaxe musical,< Revue
d'Esthetique, 8 (1955), 368-388; Robert FRANCES, La Perception de la Mu-
sique (1958); Gerhard ALBERSHEIM, vDie Tonstufe,e Die Musikforschung,
16 (1963), 139-152.

levelis of complexity, which prove also 'to be in some measure the

cumulative result of three stages of historical development.
7.121 The first and earliest of these levels is represented by the
dissonating tone, also known as the nonharmon:ic or non-chord
tone. This is a single-tone constituent of a sonorous compound
that is characterized by its tendency to resolve within the frame-
work of an underlying chord or harmonic moment. The common
cadential six-four chord, for example, for all that lit i:s overtly )>com-
posed, of the interval's of a sixth and a fourth, wilth allowance for
their octave extensions, all of which are classified as >consonant
intervals,<<nevertheless presents ,two such dissonat'ing to,nes, each
of which may occur independently, and each of which is expected
to resolve. The p.passing< six-four chord similarly groups three dis-
sonating tones, two of which are passing tones and the third an
auxiliary or neighboring tone.
7.112 The next higher level of consonant and dissonant func-
tion is the dissonant chord moment, in which the whole of a simul-
taneous sonority arouses the expectation that it will resolve to an-
other chord moment within a harmonic progresslion. Contrary to
the conventional classification of intervals or of chords as them-
selves possessing inherent consonant or dissonant qualities, there
is no reason why any interval or chord, or even a single tone,
could not serve for eiither a consonant or a dissonant moment.
Examples are offered in Fig. 2 and in Fig. 6c. Harmonic progres-
sions are characterized not only by a play of consonant and disso-
nant moments, but also; by integrated procedures of voice-leading
and by a principle of direction.49
7.123 The most comrprehensiveor tonal level of consonance and
dissonance is provided by the tonic and dominant centers, where-
by the tonal dissonance known as the dominant relationship is ul-
timately resolved only when the original tonic center is attained
in the bass of the harmony. Fig. 6a and 6b exemplify several such
dominant moments at the metrical locations marked d, none of
which show any signs of >)dis;sonant<sonorous structure.
7.130 It follows from the systemic hypothesis that consonance
and dissonance functions 'are no more linherent in the natural psy-
choacoustic phenomena that make possible the art of music, as
predicated by the rule iof simple ratios, than are the linguistic con-
ventions peculiar to any given speech language, which are indeed
conditioned by the same psychoacoustic phenomena. Accordingly,
music systems other than that of traditional or >tonal(<Western
xmusic may ipossess no harmonic functions analogous to the con-
sonance.dissonance relationship. Should they exhibit configurations
49 Norman CAZDEN, ,The principle of direction in the motion of similar
tonal harmonies,? Journal of Music Theory, 2 (1958), 162-192.

that, by strained linterpretation, might be judged to resemble some

aspect of resolution treatment, let its form prove ever so remote,
students must ever be wary of forcing so iintellectual an analogy
upon musical processes ithat may in fact be very dissilmilar to the
ear.
7.131 The cultural relativity of the systemic approach may, how-
ever, account negatively for some cross-cultural effects. For ex-
ample, it may explain why listeners conlditioned to Western music
sense a somewhat directionless indecision of harmonic moment
when they attend to the heterophonic gamelan music of Bali or
to the highly mannered Gagaku music of Japan. Conversely, sys-
temic habits undoubtedly engender bewilderment at the seeming ir-
relevance of Western harmonic relationships Ito the classical Kar-
nat'ic music of India or to the drum ensemble music of Ghana. It
may be too early to evaluate the full imperial impact of the now
worldwide diffusion of Western music, plarticularly of its commer-
cial varieties, upon the earlier and lmore isolated music cultures
of other regions.
7.132 In the current state of knowledge, the unison and the oc-
tave relationships alone appear to be recognized universally as af-
fording a special psychoacoustic aptness, if only as tuning stand-
ards. There is far less certainty than was once assumed and ex-
pressed Ithat the perfect fiifth and fourth have proven similarly
adaptable, let alone of inherent generative power, even for such
elementary service, in all music cultures. Surely we must await
and analyze far more thorough and secure ethnomusico'logical
data than is now available or summarized before we can discuss
or determine in what degree or in what manner all music systems
known may or may not exhibit among their features a dialectic of
intense-relaxed, dynamic-static, stressed-abated, active-stable func-
tion, fulfilled through interactions among simultaneous sonorous
combinations of different pitches during actual musical perform-
ances, that could be deemed equivalent as configural Gestalts to
the functional momentts of consonance and dissonance in recent
Western tonal practice.
7.140 On a imore philosophic level of discussion, thi,s investiga-
tion ileads to a judgment that the raw psychoacous'tic or sonorous
properties of ithe musical signal can provide at most certain limi-
ting natural conditions for the art of mulsic, just as there are broad
natural limits and conditions for language, for technology or for
any other facet of human culture. Even those given natural condi-
tions may be overcome as cultural demands require, as for example
the devising ,of muslical instruments that can produce sounds not
polssible for the human voice, or indeed of electronic processing
that can make available sounds not feasible on mechanical dinstru-
ments.

7.141 Nevertheless, the determinants of human art, technology

and ways of social life are not set or accounted for by those limi-
ting conditions, which are anyhow of loose rather than controlling
effect. Those determinants are the various systems or traditional
modes of behavior developed during the histories of particular hu-
man cultures. That conditioning of musical response constitutes
the ,>second nature,, of an ingrained systemic set. It consists of
those traditional modes or systems of musical behavior to which
,every individual member of the social group becomes accultu-
rated50.
7.150 Consonance and dissonance in tonal music are functional
moments or dynamic configurations that operate on a systemic lev-
el. They may not be reduced usefully to those simpler and more
static criteria that facilitate the establishment of tuning standards,
or that enter into gradations of !sonorous euphony, with which
they have long been uncritically identified.
8.00 To recapitulate the results of this history and exploratory
analysis, the definitioin of consonance and dissonance as musical
functions requires for their clarification that they first be !differen-
tiated from quite other qualities, with which they have long been
oommonly confused, and which nevertheless retain, if not their
ascribed generative power over the laws of harmony, then at least
a notable psychoacoustic validity and 'influence on a simpler level.
8.10 What has been called >consonance. in the Pythagorean
sense refers, not to any direct muslical function, but to the distinc-
tive property of ready agreement, accord or tunability found in cer-
tain intervals designated as perfect. That distinctive property is
correctly associated with the observed fact that those perfect in-
tervals may be expressed abstractly as numerical ratios of the low
integer values 1 to 4. The special psychoacoustic status of those
tunable perfect intervals is demonstrably independent of music
system, of history or of culture. That status has accordingly un-
dergone no change since the connection was first succinctly for-
mulated by Pythagoras. It is predictably not subject to change in
the future.
8.11 The objective evidence for this special tunable property
of the perfect intervals has meanwhile proliferated considerably,
and the theory recognizing their istatus is supported in every way
by very substantial findings in the fields of physical acoustics, Ithe
physiology of hearing and the psychology of perception.
8.12 Yet there remain good reasons for not using the musical
term consonance to refer to this phenomenon. One reason lis 'that
tuning procedure trelates, not to what happens liinmusic, but rather
50 Norman CAZDEN, >Musical consonance and dissonance: a cultural cri-
terion,(( Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, 4 (1945), 3-11.

to what happens before music~making begins. Of greater impor-
tance, though it tends to be overlooked by eager speculative philos-
ophers, is the indication that that pre-musical tuning procedure
cannot and does not determine or control anything about the mu-
sic that follows.
8.13 But a stronger reason for methodical investigation to a-
void calling this tunable agreement >>consonance<< is that the concept
of readily tunable relationship does not admit of so positive an
antithesis as )>dilssonance<<implies. The most that can be said ,in
this regard labout intervals not expressible in the favored perfect
ratios is that they are not ireadily tunable by the unaided ear, ,thus
>not consonant< lin that isense. That i,s far too vague and negative
a quality to prove useful. We do not identify an animal adequately
by declaring that it is not a horse.
8.14 Most important, designating this 'special class of tunable
relationships as )>consonant<< can provide no verifiable prediction
for their preference or other treatment in a musical context. On
the contrary, past attempts to derive such predictions are respon-
sible for many notorious difficulties afflicting the older music (the-
ory. Despite repeated '>proofs<< of their declared )>perfection,< open
fifths, fourths or octaves continue to be described as empty, hol-
low or poor in tonal passages. Though the excuses ,made for the
ruling are flimsy, the older theory affords a running litany prohib-
iting the use in traditional harmonic progressions of parallel suc-
cessions of fifths or octaves, for which their ascribed >perfection(<
ought on the contrary to have engendered a sense of unequalled
heavenly beauty. Worse still, ,supposing the lame rationalizations
offered for such prohibition of Isuccessive perfection were taken
on faith, it becomes an insufferable contradiction that, given a lis-
tening set other than that furnished by traditional integrated
voice-leading, parallel successions of sonorities containing perfect
fifths, perfect octaves, minor sevenths, major ninths and much else
are well accepted as sensuously pleasing land beautiful in music,
with the intermixture of flagrantly less than perfect sonorous in-
gredients mattering not at all.
8.15 Hence the desdgnation ,>conlsonance<< has proven an i,nap-
propriate and a 'misleading reference 'to 'the qualities peculiar to
the perfect intervals that enable them to serve so excellently as
tuning standards.
8.20 But subsequent extension of the principle of simple ra-
tios, which does well elucidate that limited phenomenon of tuna-
ble agreement, beyond the range of its initial reference, has only
engendered another order of irreconcilable contradictions. That
extension was transparently designed to rationalize and to justify,
by imisunderstood rubrics copied out of the ancient authorities,

the observed preference in harmonic practice for the imperfect

thirds and ,sixths. To that well-meant end, the notion was advan-
ced, and contin,ues Ito be embroidered, that musical intervals as
such, abstracted from and without regard for their real sonorous
qualities, possess intrinsic >>degreesof consonance<( proportionate
to the simplicity of the integer ratios by which may be expressed,
or, by what amounts to the same measure, by itheir location in an
ideal series of harmonic partials.
8.21 That erroneous extension of the principle of simple ratios
int'o a hypothetical Natural Law of >consonance( may best be
turned to positive service by applying to the verified data it em-
braces the more accurate term sonorous euphony.
8.22 Like tuning standards, degrees of euphony are psychoaco-
ustic phenomena which are demonstrably independent of mus:ic
system, of history or of culture. Like them, and unlike consonance
and dissonance proper, degrees of euphony do not undergo chan-
ge, and though their description by unprogrammed audiltors re-
mains ever at the mercy of the variability inherent in subjective
reports, responses to the euphony of isolated sonorities are predi-
ctably not open to future change.
8.23 The Natural Law theory fis grounded on the basic misap-
prehension that certain static sonorous qualities pertain to con-
sonance rather than to euphony. It further reduces those overall
sonorous qualities deemed relevant 'to the declared properties of
abstraced ipitch intervals alone. Thereby 'it discourages iinvestiga-
tion even of overall sonority beyond a single, limited dimension.
Because iits categorization of the distilled interval identities into
consonant anld dissonant classes had then to be reconciled with
the quite incommensurable detemninants of consonant and dis'so-
nant functional moments, considerable grief resulted for the many
studies that have adopted the Natural Law axiom as valid, without
a more rigorous questioning of its initial definitions of the con-
cepts and of the phenomena to which ithat axiom might apply.
8.30 The present proposal for differential definition helps make
,it Ipossible thus to, salvage as positive data many of the attri-
butes of sonorous euphony that have been 'studied while mi.staken-
ly attributing their bearing to consonance response. Among such
objective characteristics that undoubtedly iaffect the euphony of
Aisolatedsonorities lare smoothness, or relative freed'om from beats,
blending, or a sense of affinilty due 'to the coincidence lof harmonic
partials and of combination tones, and perceptual fusion. Such
studies could 'only gain by beiing extended to deal with the com-
plex tones and aggregates of tone that occur in real music, rather
than with their fictitious pure sine-wave extracts.

8.40 But even were such istudies re-oriented towards more per-
tinent data, good reasons would remain for not applying the de-
signation musical consonance to the set of qualities here called
euphony. One reason is that euphonious values admit only of
gradations, though lindeed of highly subtle differential gradations,
rather than the observed polarity characteristic of consonant and
dissonant moments. Another is that judgments of euphony are de-
monsltrably subject to vaniation according to ithe register, the spa-
cing, the loudness, the timbre, the envelope, the reverberation time,
and much else audible in any real musical sonority. Hence their
referents may not properly be presented as determinate proper-
ties of abstracted interval ratios alone.
8.14 Especially in view of 'the manifest current interest among
composers in exploring the outermost bounds lof absolute ,sonority
values, and the comparable interest among many music listeners
in obtaining the material concreteness of 'sonorous complexes with
uttmost fidelity, even unto ,the illusion of >p:resence( idndisembo-
died reproductions of sound and its space, both of which thus
stress ,the perception of sheer sound stripped of further evocation,
the proper study and classi,fication of degrees and types ,of eupho-
ny lags, under the 'severe handicap of having its reference confu-
sed with that iof consonant function.
8.50 Due ito ithe long-standing and continuing confusion in mu-
sic theory, first between tuning stanldards and >>consonance,<,
and subsequently between degrees of euphony and >consonance,,,
the chief impediment for 'the definition of musical consonance and
dissonance proper remains the persistent linkage of those terms
to determinate and istatic properties of individual intervals. Fur-
ther, even those interval identities are considered abstractly, re-
moved both from the totality of !their real sonorities and from
their musical contexts.
8.51 The cardinal error is therefore seen to emerge in the ini-
tial innocent but careless statement that such-and-such intervals or
interval combinations, such as those shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2
above, ,are<( of themselves intrinsically consonant, while others
)>are( correspondingly and intrinsically 'disisonant. Even where a
particular music system is pre-supposed, as that of the common
practice period of Western art music, or that of some more re-
cent synthetic prescription for musical composition, it is flagrant-
ly improper and misleading to assume that musical functions with-
in that system would necessarily depend directly upon such ab-
stracted and isolated pitch interval identities, each charged with
a built4n and invariable psychoacoustic quality. The known anal-
ogous potential for homonyms iin spoken language, not to say

of the differential enharmonic shifts perceived during musical pas-

sages sounded in equal temperament, ought to suggest greater
caution in such superficial assumptions.
8.52 In the theories advocated by Hindemith and by Schdn-
berg, for example, which set forth their reslpective synthetic music
systems, neither viewpoint is emancipated from this archaic error.
Indeed, each has reduced further the available number of 'relevant
abstract interval qualities. Thus Hindemith's theory, without ade-
quate account, explicitly eschews the older modal ddifferentialbe-
tween major and minor thirds. Hindemith's and Sch6nberg's the-
ories alike Isiterilizethe expanding tendency of the 'augmented fourth
;alndithe contracting tendency of the diminished fifth by reducing
both to a neutral tritone of six half-steps. Precisely in seeking to
eliminate reslolution action, both thus exhibit trouble as theornists
with the concept of a dialectical antithesis between consonance
and dissonance. At bottom, bo,th unwittingly retain thus the old-
-fashioned schoolbook precepts which refer those terms to ordained
values immanent in static, isolated intervals.
8.60 To define consonance and dissonance as musical functions
requires then that they first be distinguished from the familiar
and wondrous attributes which make the perfect intervals unique-
ly serviceable as tuning standards. They must then be further dis-
tinguished from the objectively substantiated gradations of sono-
rous euphony, to whatever extent those indeed can apply to ab-
,stracted pitch relations alone.
8.61 For muslical consonance and dissonance ido not usefully
refer to what 'sonorities are, and hence they Ido not pertain to any
material facet affecting 'their degree of euphony. Consonance and
dissonance refer ,rather to how sonorities act, to what they do, to
the perceptual expectations they arouse. They constitute dynamic
events or mo,ments in harmonic progressions, rather than inherent
aspects of those concrete sonorous entities that materialize at
those moments.
8.62 Mtusioalconsonance and ;dissonance are thus functions and
,not properties of thi;ngs. As functions, Ithey exhibit a polar opposi-
tilon. Cons,onance refers Ito the stable moment following upon the
resoluti,on of dissonance, whi.le dissonance 'means ithe unstable mo-
mrent calling for resolution to consionance. Their inter-relat,ions
emerge Iduring Ithe harmonic progression's which characterize the
systemic framework of the tlraditional Western tonal system.
8.70 It is implied in such definition that consonance and Idis-
sonance alike constitute functions operating within a specific if
fami:liar music system. Their:applicable range lis itherefore limited
in historical time and in culture area to a tradition of music-maak-

ing, and to corresponding perceptual set, which belong to the

common practice period of Western art music, spanning ,several
centuries, and still dominant within 'that range.
8.71 Among the iprominent structured features of that ,music
system are a diatonic base, against which chromatic linflections
may accordingly react; tonality, or gravitation towards la tonal cen-
ter, which thereby dialectically admits its opposite, modulation;
modality, notably reduced from an earlier multiplicity of qualities
to the antithesis between major and minor; a predominance of met-
rical rhythm, as over against free, rhapsodic or prose rhythm; and
functional harmony that involves -a species of voice-leading rooted
in polyphony.
8.80 It is likewise implied in such definition that, although their
elementary manifestations are traceable in earlier historical stages
of the Western tradition, consonance and dissonance function
,do not obtain in other Imus,ic'systems. Indeed, when confronted
with some synthetic or olther experimental art music procedures of
twentieth century styles, among the perplexing dtifficulties expe-
rienced by listeners oriented to traditional expectations (is not, as
has often been claimned,that the unfamiliar idioms contain so much
dissonance, but on the contrary, that (they perceive none.
8.81 And indeed, a prominent feature of what may be summed
up negatively as non-tonal music is not so much the bewildering
absence of resolution, but Ithe even Imore disconcerting absence of
criteria for the expectation o'f resolution. Thus it is not so much
the sought consonance as ,the craved dissonance that ils mis,sed.
8.82 A positive potential for synthetic systems designed Ito po's-,
sess neither consonance nor dissonance lies in their possible empha-
sis 'on'some other guiding orientation to sucoessive 'musical events.
If it does not prove an illusory hope, in place of the 'polar opposi-
tion between stable and unstable moments may one day be estab-
lished the focus towards which many among the current trends
in musical composition seem !to grope, a perceptual focus on in-
triguing suffusions of infinitely varied absolute sonorities suffi-
cient to compensate for their directionless, non-functional succes-
sions.

Sajetak
ODREDENJE KONISONANCE I DISONANCE

Da bi se konsonanca i disonanca odredile kao glazbene funkcije vaijja
ih prvo raz1'uciti od prisnih i uljep'avaju4'ih atributa ugodnog slaganja,
siklada ili ugodenosti koji jedino savr'ene inteirvale - tj. one koji se
*mogu aps'traktino izraziti kao omjeri malih Cijelih brojeva - tine na
Itaj na'in upotrebljivima kao standarde ugadanja. Nadalje, valja ib
razlikovati od onog s;tupnjevanja eufonije koje se djelomicno obja'-
:njava kao inadopuna na'ela )pprirodlnezakonitosti( jednostavnih omjera,
kolikogo-d se stiupnjevi eufo>nije mogu poikazati ovisnima iskl1juiv!o. o
odnosu visine tonova. Jer, lglazbena konsonanca i disonanca ne odnose
se upotrebivo na ono Sto zvu6ni skupovi jesu, ve' na to kako djeluju,
Sto tine i koja primala6ka oce'kivanja izazivaju. One su ustanovljene
kao dinami6ka zbivanja iii -trenuci za vrijeme harmoni6kih pro>gresija,
a ne kao ;kankretni zvuo'ni entiteti koji se u tim mometntima materijali-
ziraju. Funlkcionirajudi kao polarne suprotinosti, ikonsonanca predstavlja
stabilni moment koji se nastavlja tkao razrjese'nje disonance, dok diso-
nanca opiisuje nestabilni moment, C'ak i u siuaju jednog -tona koji
zahtijerva razrje'senje. Prostor primjene njihove dijalektike ograni'en
je na itradiCiju stvaranja glazbe i odlgovaraju6i primalafki sklop, Sto
sve pripada opc'em razdoblju (prakse zapadinog ikulturnog podru6cja.
Zbog toga konsonanca i disonanca ne proizlaze iz Prirode vec iz >druge
pirirode( koju tvori kultumno odredeni glazbeni stav.


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The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance

Author(s): Norman Cazden

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THE DEFINITION OF CONSONANCE

1.1 The understanding of consonance and dissonance as they

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from their musical contexts, rather than to identify dynamic func-

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[perF rct Unison

Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor Major

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2.1 Literally, consonance, from the Latin consonare, means

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three approaches may be called the Natural Law theory, the

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plied in this sense, may even be formulated as the psychoacoustic

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(a) Difference tones, corresponding to vibration rates equal to

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sound vibrations cannot themselves be perceived or counted di-

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evident difference !in pitch range. This special attribute of octave-

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which may be implied in some of the earliest definitions of the

STUMPF, >Konsonanz und Dissonanz,< Beitrdge zur Akustik und Musik-

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4.05 Indeed, the recognized need for resolution appears thus

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sic, and of intonation preferences among listeners to music31 uni-

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ratios, and the consequent philosophic difficulty that impedes com-

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exists in Nature, but just as surely it is commonly judged to be nei-

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logical hurdle of accounting in comparable fashion for Itheir coom-

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5.7 It is difficult to accept the resulting conglomerate of fu-

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virtue of making allowance for a flexibility of intonation variants

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Euphonie Dynamie Choron, de la Fage

7.040 The dual hypothesis responds well to a major Idilemma

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beats: 33 66 132 16 32 64 128

no more than a rationalization and a justification for previous-

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