Dissonant Views on Consonance

Dissonant Views on Consonance The Cultural Dependency of Consonance and its Reinterpretation as Euphony June 2015 MA Thesis in Arts & Culture: Musicology First supervisor: Dr. Barbara Titus Second reader: Dr. Rutger Helmers Author: Tim Ruijgrok Student number: 10633014 Date: 18-06-2015 Contents Preface ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 2 Chapter 1 - Consonant views on consonance? ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 4 The cultural approach ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 5 Chapter 2 - Consonance in the Western discourse ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 11 Introduction to the case studies ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 17 Chapter 3 - European common-practice and tonal consonance ∙ ∙ ∙ 20 The contrapuntal concept ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 21 The triadic/tonal concept ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 22 The sensory concept ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 24 Chapter 4 - North-Indian classical music and the (absence of) harmony ∙ ∙ 29 Hindustani music ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 31 Vādī & samvādī ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 33 The tritone ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 37 Chapter 5 - Javanese gamelan and inharmonic sounds ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 40 Spectrum and timbre ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 42 Conclusion ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 45 Bibliography ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ 47 1 Preface During the two years of enrolment at the University of Amsterdam, my view towards diverse expressions of music has broadened significantly. Attending the UvA with the intention to potentially increase my knowledge or interest in Asian music, I followed the "cultural trajectory" of Musicology. I was fortunate to study Russian popular music and North-Indian (classical) music, both of which – I can conclude – have enriched my knowledge. I could not come closer to my objective in terms of education, hence I attempted to steer my thesis in that direction… however, to no avail. Being unable to put my knowledge into practice in my main field of interest, i.e. Asian music, I had to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave this out of my scope. This thesis is the result of a long struggle between my own expectations of it and the actual possibilities I felt I had. However, in its present form, this thesis is heavily influenced by experiences during the classes on North-Indian music and the gamelan class I was invited to by my supervisor. The attempts to emulate the singing of the North-Indian vocal tradition, led by dr. Wim van der Meer, and the efforts to play the gamelan instruments under guidance of dr. Citra Aryandari made me realize – mentally and physically – how different music-making can be. A single impetus in the form of a blog post about a "study on consonance", then, was enough to make me wonder about a variety of implications for the particular music I had experienced up to now. Thanks Even though I managed to put all my amazement, enthusiasm and criticism towards the subject together in this research, I did not achieve this solely on my own. I want to express my sincere gratitude to all who helped me with the realization of this master's thesis. My expression of thanks goes to my supervisor Barbara Titus, for all the help and encouragements she has given me during our meetings – and for inviting me to the gamelan class! Also, I am especially grateful to my distant but close friend Adrienne Prudenciado for proofreading my thesis and offering countless corrections on my writings. Last but not least, I want to thank my parents and brother for all the emotional support they have given me over the past year. 2 Thesis outline This thesis is a literary study on the concept of consonance, and will focus particularly the alleged universal application of the concept. As I will show, consonance is a term with apparent semantic problems, and not many satisfying solutions or explanations have been formulated up to now. In spite of this, consonance is often treated as a monolithic concept, and its usage outside the context of Western tonal music is, consequently, often faulty or neglected. By approaching consonance as a form of "euphony", I hope to (re)address the issue of the cultural dependency of consonance, and show that consonance employs many different dimensions that cannot be viewed similarly between musical cultures. This will be exemplified with three case studies in which I will zoom in on the operation of euphony within specific musical cultures. The aforementioned ideas and problems will be dealt with in five chapters. Chapter 1 will introduce the reader with the term consonance, and the cultural approach that has been advocated decades ago. This cultural approach is taken up by introducing the more neutral term euphony, of which its benefits will be outlined, as well as applied in later chapters. Chapter 2 will provide the reader with an introduction on consonance within the Western discourse, including a brief literary review of important studies on the subject. It will concluded that most views regarding consonance are primarily functional and based on the European tonal music theory. This limitation will be the starting point of the three case studies, in which a particular musical culture will be examined to make clear how diverging notions of euphony actually are. Chapter 3 addresses euphony in the European common-practice, with the goal to trace this generic and limited view on consonance. This formulation will be identified as a conflation of 18th-century ideas of euphony. Chapter 4 will challenge the mutual relationship of consonance and harmony. Additionally, I will turn the discussion to North-Indian classical music to investigate how euphony is seen in a musical practice with a static harmonic background. In this case, the melodic handling of consonance, and the flexible nature of a rāga move away from the fixed and functional approach to euphony. Chapter 5 will offer a totally different view on euphony in Javanese gamelan music by emphasizing the relation between spectrum and scale. It will be highlighted how the scales employed in Java are logical and have a high euphonious value as a result of the spectra of the instruments used. This will all point to the conclusion that consonance is not universal and is dependent on the musical culture in which it operates, and that euphony proves to be a broader and more appropriate concept to address the issue outside the Western discourse. 3 Chapter 1 Consonant views on consonance? In daily conversations, consonance is often treated as a monolithic concept of which people tacitly assume others know what they are talking about.1 A simplification of the term is evident especially in musical education, where it is taken for granted that particular chords or intervals are consonant and others are not. While it seems that consonance is generally understood in the same way, the contrary is true. Consonance is like culture; a term that immediately confronts one with inevitable semantic problems. Shifting meanings and uses of consonance in the course of history, the result of different cultural and discursive environments, have troubled many scholars in defining the concept in a satisfactory way. So many thoughts, meanings and theories about consonance have been formulated, that a clear-cut definition has not yet been coined – which is, astonishingly, practically impossible. Therefore, before delving into deeper discussions of the subject, we first have to address some fundamental aspects regarding consonance. The most crucial aspect of consonance is its varied usage, which is determined by its meaning and the context in which it operates. Is it a quality of a tone? Is it purely a music-theoretical term? Is it part of a practice? A social construct? An experience or value judgment? In fact, all of these attributes can apply, which is the reason why consonance cannot be viewed as a monolithic concept. Some encyclopedic sources like Grove Music Online acknowledge this multiplicity of usages and distinguish an acoustical, psychological, musical and perceptual meaning. In Western tonal music, however, consonance is mostly treated as a music-theoretical term. Within this contracted view, different meanings can be derived by closer examination. Take the interval of a fourth, for example. Regarded as a consonant outside musical context, it may be seen as a dissonant in certain chord inversions within the contrapuntal practice. The same is true for the tritone, but indicating the exact opposite (Gauldin 2004: 17). In acoustical science, however, the intervals would be either consonant or dissonant depending on the frequency relations of their sound waves. Thus, in this case, one may observe a difference between consonance used as a term, as a musical practice, or as tonal quality, related to two discursive environments. One can extend this idea further than most theoreticians do. The ambiguous state of the term consonance makes it very likely that its change in meaning is not limited historically, but likewise culturally. This step is seldom addressed in academic writings about the subject of 1 When discussing consonance as a concept, I also mean its antonym dissonance, unless explicitly stated. 4 consonance. Surprisingly Robert Gauldin, in his Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music, hits the nail on the head regarding this issue. He says: There must be more to the question of consonance and dissonance than mere physics, however, or people of all cultures and historical periods would define the terms in the same way. (Gauldin 2004: 17) Even though it was just mentioned in passing, I would contend that Gauldin is right to say that neither historically nor culturally, consonance has ever had the same meaning. The first claim, that meanings of consonance changed historically, is acknowledged by many academic writers such as Norman Cazden (1945; 1980), William Sethares (2005), Richard Parncutt & Graham Hair (2011), to name a few. Additionally, it is the core assumption of James Tenney's book A History of "Consonance" and "Dissonance", which is one of the key works on the subject. The latter claim, that meanings of consonance differ culturally, is mostly not addressed. Fortunately, there are exceptions to the rule. The cultural approach In the Western discourse of consonance, there are at least two calls for a "cultural approach" towards consonance, both of which seemed to be voices calling in the wilderness as no one extended on these topics (see Lundin 1947; Cazden 1945).

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