Dissonant Tones Sound Fine To Some People Not Raised on Western Music

[wink]

Who'da thunk?

Happy reading...... !

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/the-jaws-theme-might-not-be-scary-for-tsimane-people/

[mypasswordis]

If the researchers had just picked up a music textbook, they'd have known that the western concept of consonance and dissonance has always been changing, with different temperaments and tunings. Pythagorean tuning was used into the 16th century and it's based on harmonic ratios. Even after tonality with triadic harmony as we know it today had been established, different intervals were considered consonant or dissonant depending on time period, such as the perfect fourth in contrapuntal contexts. This is just considering the "standard" heptatonic major and minor scales, so not including any other pitch number base like pentatonic or octatonic. Western classical music has largely done away with tonality and with it the tonal hierarchies, starting about 100 years ago with Schoenberg.

[Craig Sawyers]

There are quite deliberate dissonances in Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium from the 16th century.  And Mozart received a really heated letter from his father for using more adventurous anharmonious intervals in his music.

So in a sense it has ever been thus, although clearly accelerating in the 20th century with not only Schoenberg but also Stravinsky, Messiaen, Cage and many others.

[mypasswordis]

The entire concept of harmonic progression is a resolution of dissonance to consonance in a tonal hierarchy, so yes, all tonal music from Lully to Haydn to Mahler has dissonance tautologically. Hell, polyphony from the Middle Ages has dissonance and consonance. My point is some things that were considered dissonant in "western music" at some point are no longer, and vice versa. The intervals most agree on that are consonances are octaves and perfect fifths, because of their simplicity in relationship and appearance in the harmonic series of a tone. Octaves are powers of two and perfect fifths are in a 3:2 ratio. The harmonic series is largely part of the rationale behind Schenkerian analysis.

Schoenberg sought to dissolve the traditional concept of dissonance and consonance by getting rid of tonal centers altogether, though he chose to find certain analogues in his twelve-tone system that ended up still emphasizing certain pitch classes over others. Stravinsky achieved a lot of success with his neoclassicism before developing his own atonal system after Schoenberg died (there was enmity between the two, as two great masters can develop). Schoenberg basically opened Pandora's Box, once it was discovered that there was a whole universe outside of tonality. One of Messaien's most prominent students, Iannis Xenakis, was actually also an engineer and used stochastic processes and set theory in his works. Cage was a student of Schoenberg and developed his own style incorporating random variation, drawing aleatoricism from Asian music and culture.

[sorenb]

33 minutes ago, Craig Sawyers said:

There are quite deliberate dissonances in Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium from the 16th century.  And Mozart received a really heated letter from his father for using more adventurous anharmonious intervals in his music.

So in a sense it has ever been thus, although clearly accelerating in the 20th century with not only Schoenberg but also Stravinsky, Messiaen, Cage and many others.

Wolfgang did receive numerous heated letters from his father. 
Cage? has he made anything of interest? thought he spend most of his time preparing various pianos with nuts and bolts ...

in the list of dudes one might mention Wagner, Bruckner and Nielsen as well ;o)

5 minutes ago, mypasswordis said:

stochastic

Karlheinz Stochastic?

[mypasswordis]

20 minutes ago, sorenb said:

Karlheinz Stochastic?

Hahaha that's so nerdy. I took a couple seminars with a student of Stockhausen. He had some interesting stories to tell about him, most of which I've already forgotten.

 

[sorenb]

Just now, mypasswordis said:

Hahaha that's so nerdy. I took a couple seminars with a student of Stockhausen. He had some interesting stories to tell about him, most of which I've already forgotten.

 

I'm sure Karlheinz is known in 100 years from now ...not so sure about Cage though ;o)

[mypasswordis]

7 minutes ago, sorenb said:

I'm sure Karlheinz is known in 100 years from now ...not so sure about Cage though ;o)

LOL tell us how you really feel about Cage. You live on the other side of the pond, so it makes sense Stockhausen is more popular over there, but people in the states love Cage. I'm sure you've seen that vid on youtube of him playing a cactus:

 

[jvlgato]

What about the tritone, which is consonant only to Colin?

[Pars]

4 hours ago, mypasswordis said:

One of Messaien's most prominent students, Iannis Xenakis

Interesting discussion, and you (mypasswordis, sorry can't remember your real name) can articulate much more than I can regarding consonance/dissonance.

I heard the U of I Percussion Ensemble perform a Xenakis piece years ago for a PAS Iowa convention thing when I was in school. The hall must have matched Xenakis' design because I could have sworn I was hearing synthesizers (as in ELP), as in a "wow-wow" moving around the hall. All from acoustic drums placed in the balcony at strategic intervals around the hall.

Stockhausen: hehe, pretty much the wildest shit I've ever heard.

In music theory classes, where I heard the Stockhausen and other 12 tone pioneers, we did an analysis of Wagner, Parsifal (my screen name), Overture. From what I recall, 300 bars or so where you could kind of glimpse key(s), but couldn't nail it down. A lot of step-wise movement in the piece, moving from key to key, starts here, comes out there, but in between? Very "tonal" sounding piece of music as well.

Question: how much do alternate tonalities fuck with people who have perfect pitch (i.e., my mother among them)? I'm sure this is tied somewhat to the tonality system that they are accustomed to.

Add to that Baroque tunings, etc.

Edited July 29, 2016 by Pars

[sorenb]

9 hours ago, mypasswordis said:

LOL tell us how you really feel about Cage. You live on the other side of the pond, so it makes sense Stockhausen is more popular over there, but people in the states love Cage. I'm sure you've seen that vid on youtube of him playing a cactus:

How I feel about Cage? well, apart from having played his 4'33" on the piano and transcribed it for guitar (not quite as challenging as I assumed), I haven't found much of interest from Cage ... probably a short comming of mine ;o)
Stockhausen being popular? well, in the sense that two of the dudes from Kraftwerk did take lessons from Karlheinz yes, otherwise no. Karlheinz always did his own thing and didn't seem to care much for being popular. He is probably more important as an influence rather actually .... 

Edited July 29, 2016 by sorenb

[Craig Sawyers]

I am a great fan of Wagner's music. We're lucky to be fairly near to https://lfo.org.uk/ so have seen a splendid complete Ring there, plus Tristan (last year) and Tannhauser (this year). Saw Die Meistersingers in Birmingham with Bryn Terfel too.  Very much looking forward to when Longborough do Parsifal.

Of course there is the dark, unpleasant side of Wagner. His politics, and views on Jews were not nice at all, which is why his music was passionately admired by Hitler. Wagner hated Brahms with a passion, and put it about that the sounds in his music were based on the sounds of dying cats he shot from his balcony with a bow and arrow.  Which may or may not be apocryphal https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/12/highereducation.arts

 

[mypasswordis]

Oooh Pars, the origin of your username is very cool. We did an analysis of part of the other of Wagner's influential pre-atonal operas, Tristan und Isolde with its infamous Tristan chord. It's funny that the Brahms and Wagner/progressive camps hated each other because both composers revered Beethoven greatly and just saw themselves as logical successors. Schoenberg wrote a famous essay, Brahms the Progressive, which illuminated why he didn't agree with the paradigm of Brahms as conservative.  Also interesting that Wagner's music influenced Schoenberg deeply (of course Brahms as well), despite Schoenberg being a Jew and eventually needing to flee Austria because of the Nazis. Proof that music transcends politics and whatever other bullshit people think of to spread hate and destruction.

 

@Pars again, not sure what you mean by alternate tonalities, but different tunings definitely irk people with perfect/absolute pitch. Usually they can still tell the pitch unless it's way off. I don't even completely buy into the concept of perfect pitch, because instruments were tuned to totally different frequencies at various points in history, and it wasn't standardized for a long time. Concert pitch A is "440Hz" today (more like 441-443) but back in the Baroque it was more like 415Hz (albeit with a wide range), which is a full semi-tone down from 440. Not only that, what about music that is microtonal? I think people who have it may associate a certain harmonic profile with a pitch or glean some other auditory information, and unconsciously compare that with their excellent auditory memory.

12 hours ago, sorenb said:

How I feel about Cage? well, apart from having played his 4'33" on the piano and transcribed it for guitar (not quite as challenging as I assumed), I haven't found much of interest from Cage ... probably a short comming of mine ;o)
Stockhausen being popular? well, in the sense that two of the dudes from Kraftwerk did take lessons from Karlheinz yes, otherwise no. Karlheinz always did his own thing and didn't seem to care much for being popular. He is probably more important as an influence rather actually .... 

One can't mention Stockhausen without bringing up the Helicopter quartet Can't see why he wouldn't be popular after that. Sounds like you knew him personally... if so, got any stories? do you know Per Nørgård? And what key is your guitar transcription of 4'33"?

 

 

[sorenb]

@mypasswordis not aquatint with Stocastichausen ... some years ago I got hold of a box set 62 CDs called Electroacoustic history ...although it didn't contain anything Else Marie  Pade (died january this year), it's an interesting box ... quite like Pierre Henry's "variations pour une porte et un soupir" which I re-discovered as I actually had that already ;o)
I transcribed 4'33" into Es ...as most great works are in Es or parallel c for some reason ...

The main character in A Clockwork Orange calls Beethoven by his first: Ludwig van ... so do I, when ever I'm in that mood ;o) 

BTW my Iphone is setup to use Webern Op.10, nr.4 as ringing tone ...no one else seems to have that one, for some reason  ;o)

[wink]

5 hours ago, sorenb said:

(snip)

BTW my Iphone is setup to use Webern Op.10, nr.4 as ringing tone ...no one else seems to have that one, for some reason  ;o)

I thought Beethoven's Fate Knocking makes for a great ringtone as well as doorbell chime........   

 

[JimL]

Well, as mypasswordis has pointed out, the concept of consonance and dissonance has been a moving target, from before Bach to now.  It is certainly interesting to read contemporary critics complaining about harsh dissonances to them on hearing pieces of music which we now consider standard parts of the "classical" repertoire and some of the most beautiful music ever written.  

 

Anyone interested in this should get a copy of Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, where you can read comemporary critic's slagging of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony "an incomprehensible union of strange harmonies", Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto,  whose finale "transfers us to a brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian holiday. We see plainly the savage vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell vodka." or this, "in search of ear-rending dissonances, torturous transitions, sharp modulations, repugnant contortions of melody and rhythm, Chopin is altogether indefatigable."

 

One of the funniest putdowns I've read was Mark Twain about Wagner, " His music is better than it sounds."

Edited July 30, 2016 by JimL

[sorenb]

5 hours ago, wink said:

I thought Beethoven's Fate Knocking makes for a great ringtone as well as doorbell chime........   

 

if you want Ludwig van as doorbell chime, I'd suggest you go for the first bars of the scherzo from the ninth rather ...it also has a nice reference to Kubrick, approving the right and doing the wrong 

Edited July 30, 2016 by sorenb

[wink]

Sounds good, but I still prefer "Fate Knocking" for some reason.

 

[gepardcv]

On July 29, 2016 at 2:04 AM, sorenb said:

having played [Cage's] 4'33" on the piano and transcribed it for guitar (not quite as challenging as I assumed)

That just made my day. 

[wink]

 

@sorenb - This one's for you : transcripted real good     

 

[Craig Sawyers]

Just been dipping in and out of Stockhausen's Sternklang.  Uncertain if I like it or not, but think it is worth the effort. Possibly.

[sorenb]

1 hour ago, Craig Sawyers said:

Just been dipping in and out of Stockhausen's Sternklang.  Uncertain if I like it or not, but think it is worth the effort. Possibly.

intrigued by the sounds of astro?

[sorenb]

2 hours ago, wink said:

@sorenb - This one's for you : transcripted real good     

 

the triplets is a bit "how are ya doin'?", also disappointment the girls are just standing there - do some headbanging at least 

[mypasswordis]

3 hours ago, wink said:

 

This guy completely doesn't understand the point of 4'33" whatsoever and is making the piece all about him and his stupid antics. The performer should not get in the way of the sound of the audience, which in fact then becomes the "performer" and audience simultaneously.

This is the score (one version):

@Craig Sawyers try Stimmung or Kontrapunkte!

[sorenb]

1 hour ago, mypasswordis said:

This guy completely doesn't understand the point of 4'33" whatsoever and is making the piece all about him and his stupid antics. The performer should not get in the way of the sound of the audience, which in fact then becomes the "performer" and audience simultaneously

do you also think Manzoni got in the way of his piece putting it in cans? I mean, if it was a big piece, one would assume a bit of antics ...

Edited August 2, 2016 by sorenb