- published: 22 Jul 2015
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In music, a consonance (Latin com-, "with" + sonare, "to sound") is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable (at rest), as opposed to a dissonance (Latin dis-, "apart" + sonare, "to sound"), which is considered to be unstable (or temporary, transitional). In more general usage, a consonance is a combination of notes that sound pleasant to most people when played at the same time; dissonance is a combination of notes that sound harsh or unpleasant to most people.
Consonance has been defined variously through:
+The perfect fourth is considered a dissonance in most classical music when its function is contrapuntal. Note that in the Western Middle Ages, only the octave and perfect fifth were considered consonant harmonically (see Interval (music) or Just Intonation for the explanation).
These may be generalized as simplicity.
In Western music, dissonance is the quality of sounds that seems "unstable" and has an aural "need" to "resolve" to a "stable" consonance. Both consonance and dissonance are words applied to harmony, chords, and intervals and, by extension, to melody, tonality, and even rhythm and metre. Although there are physical and neurological facts important to understanding the idea of dissonance, the precise definition of dissonance is culturally conditioned — definitions of and conventions of usage related to dissonance vary greatly among different musical styles, traditions, and cultures. Nevertheless, the basic ideas of dissonance, consonance, and resolution exist in some form in all musical traditions that have a concept of melody, harmony, or tonality. Dissonance being the complement of consonance it may be defined, as above, as non-coincidence of partials, lack of fusion or pattern matching, or as complexity.