Consonance and Dissonance

Research and Questions

References

Cognitive

Categories

• acoustic
• frequency ratios
• temporal dissonance
• tonotopic dissonance
• psychoacoustic/psychophysical
• tonotopic dissonance
• pitch: absolute, interval
• socio-cultural
• harmonic relationships

• cognitive/perception

Bodner, Ehud, Avi Gilboa, and Dorit Amir. "The unexpected side-effects of dissonance." Psychology of

Music 35/2 (2007): 286-305.

Bowling, Daniel, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Kamraan Z. Gill, and Marisa Hoeschele. "The Nature and Nurture of

Musical Consonance." Music Perception 35/1 (2017): 118-121.

Di Stefano, Nicola, Valentina Focaroli, Domenico Formica, Alessandro Giuliani, Flavio Keller, and Fabrizio

Taffoni. "A new research method to test auditory preferences in young listeners: Results from a consonance versus dissonance perception study." Psychology of Music 45/5 (2017): 699-712.

Hutchinson, William and Leon Knopoff. "The significance of the acoustic component of consonance in

Western triads." Journal of Musicological Research 3/1 (1979): 5-22.

Johnson-Laird, Phil, Olivia E. Kang, and Yuan Chang Leong. "On Musical Dissonance." Music Perception

30/1 (2012): 19-35.

Seror, George, and W. Trammell Neill. "Context Dependent Pitch Perception in Consonant and Dissonant

Harmonic Intervals." Music Perception 32/5 (2015): 460-469.

Van de Geer, John P., Willem J. M. Levelt, and Reinier Plomp. "The Connotation of Musical Consonance."

Acta Psychologica 20 (1962): 308-319.

What we know/what is commonly tested:

• preference
• ability to perceive specific types of dissonances (more often than consonance)
• effect of consonance/dissonance on cognitive performance (arousal, responsiveness, brain activity, etc.)

Emerging:

• psychophysical link: acoustic to what is perceived
• expectation
• cultural

Consonance and Dissonance

Problems/Further Study

Other References

Cazden, Norman. "The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance." International Review of the

Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 11/2 (1980): 123-168.

Cazden, Norman. "Musical Consonance and Dissonance: A Cultural Criterion." The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism 4/1 (1945): 3-11.

Cazden, Norman. "Sensory Theories of Musical Consonance." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art

Criticism 20/3 (1962): 301-319.

Krumhansl, Carol. Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

• the phenomena: consonance and dissonance
• hard to describe: many studies use words such as "harmonious", "pleasing", "pure", "ugly", "harsh", etc.
• separation from other musical factors: register, volume, instrument and timbre, tonality, and many more
• defining consonance and dissonance
• different between musicians and non-musicians
• different among musicians
• context
• relationship between quanitification and other factors, especially perception
• sociocultural factors and biological factors
• different levels of consonance and dissonance
• simultaneous, melodic/contrapuntal, long-term
• lack of cultural variety
• duality

Greenwood, Donald. "Auditory masking and the critical band." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 33 (1961):

484-501.

Hamamoto, Mayumi, Mauro Botelho, and Margaret Munger. "Non-musicians' and musicians' perception of bitonality."

Psychology of Music 38/4 (2010): 423-445.

Huron, David. "Tonal consonance versus tonal fusion in polyphonic sonorities." Music Perception 9/2 (1991): 135-154.

Kameoka, A. and M. Kuriyagawa. "Consonance theory, part I: Consonance of dyads." Journal of the Acoustical Society of

America 45/6 (1969): 1451-1459.

Kameoka, A. and M. Kuriyagawa. "Consonance theory, part I: Consonance of complex tones and its computation method."

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 45/6 (1969): 1460-1469.

Plomp, Reinier and Willem J. M. Levelt. "Tonal consonance and critical bandwidth." Journal of the Acoustical Society of

America 38 (1965): 548-560.

Stumpf, Carl. Tonpsychologie. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1883.

Many others.