dissonance, in music, the impression of stability and repose (consonance) in relation to the impression of tension or clash (dissonance) experienced by a listener when certain combinations of tones or notes are sounded together. In certain musical styles, movement to and from consonance and dissonance…

…notes that are consonances and dissonances, and prescribing where consonances and dissonances should occur in the strong and weak beats of musical metre. In contrast, composers, especially the great ones, have shown more interest in the horizontal aspects: the movement of the individual melodic lines and long-range relationships of musical…

…other intervals that were relatively dissonant; i.e., they implied less repose and more tension.

…the tension between consonance and dissonance, and the creation of unprecedented harmonies by the use of computers have been the result of a search for new methods of musical organization. This in turn was the natural outgrowth of the blurring and final dissolution of the harmonic system that had prevailed…

(concordant; reposeful); vivadi, comparable to dissonant (discordant; lacking repose); and anuvadi, comparable to assonant (neither consonant nor dissonant). As in the ancient Greek Pythagorean system, which influenced Western music, only fourths and fifths (intervals of four or five tones in a Western scale) were considered consonant. In the Indian system…

…ratio and of consonance and dissonance. A given musical pitch is determined by the frequency of vibration of the sound wave that produces it, as a′ = 440 cycles per second. An interval, or distance between two pitches, can thus be mathematically described as the ratio of the frequency of…

…opposing camps of consonant and dissonant. But the meaning of those terms can be known with assurance only by the person who utters them, although many attempts have been made to link consonant with the pleasant, smooth, stable, and beautiful and dissonant with the unpleasant, grating, unstable, and ugly. These…