Dissonance - acquired taste?

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Peter:
But all the composers you mention make use of dissonance - Bach especially! Music to be interesting needs dissonance and resolution, in other words contrast. The 20th century though in doing away with tonality removed the resolution so we're left with no contrast, just pure dissonance!

I think what 20th Century composers have been trying to do is create a new enviroment in which there is a different set of dissonance and consonants. We are so adjusted to the previous 17th-19th Century traditions that we are unable to hear consonances except in that which are used to. When I listen to Bartok the things that are consonant in his music, for example, are some of the more dissonant sounds in Beethoven, yet they are consonant to me because of the contrasting elements--the "new" dissonance, if you will. I don't know if I am clear as mud, but I tried....ha ha!

[Peter]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
I think what 20th Century composers have been trying to do is create a new enviroment in which there is a different set of dissonance and consonants. We are so adjusted to the previous 17th-19th Century traditions that we are unable to hear consonances except in that which are used to. When I listen to Bartok the things that are consonant in his music, for example, are some of the more dissonant sounds in Beethoven, yet they are consonant to me because of the contrasting elements--the "new" dissonance, if you will. I don't know if I am clear as mud, but I tried....ha ha!

Yes I know what you mean and I was being rather flippant in labelling all 20th century music under one banner. Bartok is a composer I admire greatly, but I don't love his music in the same way as Beethoven. Schoenberg was the composer who developed the tone row and to my ears the artificiality of such a contrived system was not a success.

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'Man know thyself'

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by Peter:
Yes I know what you mean and I was being rather flippant in labelling all 20th century music under one banner. Bartok is a composer I admire greatly, but I don't love his music in the same way as Beethoven. Schoenberg was the composer who developed the tone row and to my ears the artificiality of such a contrived system was not a success.

One of the major problems of the tone row is that it avoided the contrasts of being home (tonally), diverging, and then returning to home which even with shifting tonal centers there is some semblance of a tonality. Dodecaphonic music eludes that completely and often fails because of a strong feeling of sameness and divergence. That can be accomplished very successfully with rhythmic motifs and recognizable events, but the lack of tonal center really does kill the music for most people, I think.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
One of the major problems of the tone row is that it avoided the contrasts of being home (tonally), diverging, and then returning to home which even with shifting tonal centers there is some semblance of a tonality. Dodecaphonic music eludes that completely and often fails because of a strong feeling of sameness and divergence. That can be accomplished very successfully with rhythmic motifs and recognizable events, but the lack of tonal center really does kill the music for most people, I think.

Yes I think you're right - I think few could disagree that the greatest music comes from the classical and baroque period when tonality reigned supreme!

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'Man know thyself'