Why Dissonant Music Sounds 'Wrong'

Strangely enough, I'm reading Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony right now. I recommend the opening chapter to everyone interested in this topic, because it's one of the most well-written rants in all of music theory.

What Schoenberg opposed was the idea, which he claimed to be prevalent among music theorists in the late 19th and early 20th century, that we could discover "laws of beauty" which could be applied to make beautiful art. Schoenberg argued that when you propose "rules" of making art (be it writing, drawing or music composition), those "rules" tend to be mostly exceptions. Moreover, these "rules" are almost always proposed by theorists, not art creators.

Now he may have been right about this view being common in the music theory community at the time. Today, we know better.

For a start, we now understand the role of culture.

We can only imagine what Palestrina sounded like to people brought up on Gregorian chant. Today, it still sounds beautiful, but it also sounds very old. We can't imagine what was in the minds of the people who rioted at the premiere of The Rite of Spring. Hell, most of us can't even imagine what the big deal was about Elvis Presley! Why did anyone think that old music was shocking and an affront to civilization?

And, of course, music theorists discovered traditions other than the European one, which sound odd to us, but normal to someone brought up in India or China or Indonesia or wherever the music comes from.

Secondly, we now understand that music theory, and the "rules" therein, are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are a language for understanding and talking about music in the tradition of the European common practice era.

In that sense, it's like category theory in mathematics or design patterns in software engineering. they're not recipes on how to write programs or do maths, they are a vocabulary for understanding, reasoning about and talking about programs or mathematical structure.

Schoenberg was a pioneer. Like all pioneers, he was wrong about quite a lot. But he did have a very good point to make, which in the modern context is moot.

Incidentally, in his book on counterpoint, Schoenberg also railed against modal tonality, judging it to be a poor imitation of the modern major and minor keys. If you haven't yet had your recommended daily intake of irony, you're welcome.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/tXyZiuq7Qz0/story01.htm

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