psychoacoustic theories of dissonance often follow Helmholtz and attribute it to partials (fundamental frequencies or overtones) near enough in frequency to affect the same region of the basilar membrane and therefore to cause roughness, i.e., rapid beating. In contrast, tonal theories attribute dissonance to violations of harmonic principles embodied in Western music. We propose a dual-process theory that embeds roughness within tonal principles. The theory predicts the robust increasing trend in the dissonance of triads: major < minor < diminished < augmented. Previous experiments used too few chords for a comprehensive test of the theory, and so Experiment 1 examined the rated dissonance of all 55 possible three-note chords, and Experiment 2 examined a representative sample of 48 of the possible four-note chords. The participants' ratings concurred reliably and corroborated the dual-process theory. Experiment 3 showed that, as the theory predicts, consonant chords are rated as less dissonant when they occur in a tonal sequence (the cycle of fifths) than in a random sequence, whereas this manipulation has no reliable effect on dissonant chords outside common musical practice.

background

The Cambridge history of Western music theory

On Musical Dissonance

Developments in vocal music, particularly in dramatic genres, naturally made increased demands on singers. This chapter focuses particularly on Italian practices of vocal technique and their pedagogy, and especially on the earlier part of the seventeenth century. It provides an overview of the singers themselves in terms of voice types and their deployment in practice, focusing principally upon the soprano voice in its various manifestations, because of its particular rise to prominence during this time. The chapter looks at the expressive functions of vocal technique in singers' performances on the stage. Child singers were ubiquitous in professional performances throughout Europe. Boys were to be found everywhere in church choirs both Catholic and Protestant, and as the German treatises make abundantly clear, were required to develop sophisticated skills to be able to perform the increasingly complex Italianate figural music.

Vocal performance in the seventeenth century

Part of the seminal Cambridge History of Music series, this volume departs from standard histories of early modern Western music in two important ways. First, it considers music as something primarily experienced by people in their daily lives, whether as musicians or listeners, and as something that happened in particular locations, and different intellectual and ideological contexts, rather than as a story of genres, individual counties, and composers and their works. Second, by constraining discussion within the limits of a 100-year timespan, the music culture of the sixteenth century is freed from its conventional (and tenuous) absorption within the abstraction of 'the Renaissance', and is understood in terms of recent developments in the broader narrative of this turbulent period of European history. Both an original take on a well-known period in early music and a key work of reference for scholars, this volume makes an important contribution to the history of music.

The Cambridge history of sixteenth-century music

Music in the Early Colonial World

Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese composer and theorist Vicente Lusitano wrote a manuscript treatise on improvised counterpoint which constitutes the most thorough and detailed explanation that has survived on the subject. This manuscript has long been overlooked by music historians, despite being easily accessible at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (Paris). The manuscript is described and its history traced. Lusitano's rules, techniques and stylistic advice are investigated and compared with contemporary theory. The extraordinary complexity of the contrapuntal lines singers were expected to invent extempore calls for a reappraisal of the relationship between improvisation and composition, also discussed by Lusitano. Historical evidence is adduced to provide a context for this document; far from being disconnected from the real life of sixteenth-century music, Lusitano's manuscript counterpoint treatise provides a key to understanding the oral tradition of Renaissance art music.

The Cambridge history of Western music theory

Citations

On Musical Dissonance

Vocal performance in the seventeenth century

The Cambridge history of sixteenth-century music

Music in the Early Colonial World

Singing upon the book according to vicente lusitano

Related Papers (5)

Playing with History: HISTORICALLY INFORMED PERFORMANCE IN MUSIC CRITICISM

The Cambridge companion to Wagner

The Cambridge companion to the piano

From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450-1500

Listening through Reading: Musical Literacy and the Concert Audience