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Dissonance
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Phases of Dissonance Treatment
In the history of dissonance treatment we recognize three phases of decisive importance:
1. Dissonance as a secondary phenomenon, (melodically induced accidental dissonance).
2. Dissonance as a primary phenomenon (âmusicalâ dissonance in conscious, deliberately stressed contrast to consonance).
3. Dissonance employed as a means of poetical expression.
Though the order of succession in the disposition made here is contingent upon time, it must not be understood that the one of these phases definitively supersedes the other. What has once been attained is retained and employed co-ordinately with the new. Nor may we venture to mark the divisions of the periods too exactly. Although the beginning of the first phase may be put as simultaneous with the earliest regulated polyphony, the second phase at about the year 1400, and the third at c. 1600, still the germs of the later phases may be traced back quite naturally to the earlier. At the periods mentioned, the characteristic instances increase so inordinately, both in number and distinctness, that the basis of a historic division seems to be present.
In the first phase, the dissonance has merely the character of an accompanying phenomenon,âwhat might be called a melodic function. It is tolerated out of consideration for melodic development, but no stress of significance is attached to it. Consonance is preferred upon all accented points; dissonances are, as far as possible, packed together upon unaccented beats. In its most highly developed form, this order of dissonance becomes the passing note (or passing discord). This rather negative sort of dissonance conception leads, in the highest phases of dissonance treatment, to the strict execution of the principle of the passing, or conjunctly moving, dissonance.
In the second phase the dissonance is desired for its own sake, and it is consciously employed as a co-equal contrast to consonance. The practical consequence of this highly developed conception is the dissonance of the syncopeâsuspension.
Finally, in the third phase, dissonance is employed as an expressional factor, most often to symbolize painful or pathetic emotions.
These three phases are all represented in Palestrinaâs compositions, though instances of the third phase are very rare. In an account of the relation of the Palestrina style to the dissonance, it would therefore be quite natural to classify the material according to these phases,âwhich classification indeed has been made the basis of the following treatise.
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Dissonance as a Secondary Phenomenon
a). The Passing Dissonance
One of the oldest notations of West European polyphonic music that come to light up to the present seems to be found in the tract âMusica enchiriadisâ,135 commonly ascribed to a monk from a Flemish cloister, St. Amand, by the name of Hucbald (d. c. 930). However, this tract dates from such a late part of the 10th century that it is more likely that a younger theorist, and not Hucbald, was its author.136 The musical examples contained in âMusica enchiriadisâ demonstrate the so-called âOrganumââ2-part compositions that, according to Hucbald, may be extended to 6 parts by doubling the octavesâwhich is produced by setting a lower voice to a Gregorian melody, the counterpoint accompanying this melody mainly in similar motion with fifths and fourths. In the earliest Organum, however, there is a preference for fourths above all other intervals, while later fifths predominate. It is thought by some that this music is not to be taken seriously at all. Raphael Kiesewetterâs remark as to its âmoral impossibilityâ is a classic expression of this view.
But more recent scholars also express the supposition that âOrganumâ merely represents rather awkward theoretical efforts according to antique theoretical recipes.137 which aimed at the correction of the current musical practice, that is supposed to have taken quite another and freer form in popular use, far removed from all the anxious clinging to parallel motion, and moreover with a probable preference for thirds and sixths. Since then, however, the rather new branch of Comparative Musical Science has really rendered these interpretive efforts superfluous by proving that fourths and fifths are commonly used by races in a primitive stage of musical development, for example by certain negro tribes of East Africa,138 the Burmese139 and the Chinese.140 The Icelandic âTvisangâ too bears significant testimony in favour of the theory of the living force of âOrganumâ.141
Should there, consequently, be little reason to doubt that singing in fourths and fifths existed also as a musical reality in Western Europe, the problem of the origin and antecedents of this form of song is one of high interest. Assuredly it must have been preceded by an extended period of freely improvised polyphony, which has been designated, by a term borrowed from Plato, as Heterophony.142 In this, a kind of pseudo-polyphony arises through all the voices singing what is really the same melody, only with variants in the different voices. Naturally these voices often move in unison or the octave, and continue in these intervals at great extent, likewise generally beginning and ending with them. But it often happens also that one or another of these parts leaves the beaten path, and proceeds in notes diverging from the leading melody. As a rule, however, they do not venture very far from the terra firma of this tune, but commonly keep within a prudent proximity to its borders.
Polyphony of this sort may be found among many exotic nations, for example among the Chinese, Siamese, and Javanese; according to the testimony of Plato and Aristoxenos of Taranto, it was known also in ancient Greece.143 Indeed, it is said that music of this kind is still to be heard in Greece, and heterophony plays an important role at all events in Russian folk music.144
Concerning the transition from heterophony to parallel singing it is difficult to form an opinion. It may be that the sense of hearing notes together was developed through heterophony. After singing heterophonically during centuriesâprobably mostly occupied with the individual singer in his ornamental extravagances, (though perhaps also with appreciation of the rhythmic variety), it probably occurred one day to some ingenious soul that the combination of this and that musical note in itself had a striking effect. This item was t...
