View source for Emancipation of the dissonance

{{Short description|Musical concept by Arnold Schoenberg}}
[[File:Debussy's chords for Guiraud.png|thumb|250px|Chords, featuring chromatically altered sevenths and ninths and progressing unconventionally, explored by [[Debussy]] in a "celebrated conversation at the piano with his teacher [[Ernest Guiraud]]" (Lockspeiser 1962, 207).]]

The '''emancipation of the dissonance''' was a concept or goal put forth by composer [[Arnold Schoenberg]] and others, including his pupil [[Anton Webern]], who styled it '''''The Path to the New Music'''''. The phrase first appears in Schoenberg's 1926 essay "Opinion or Insight?".{{sfn|Schoenberg|1975|pp=258–264}} It may be described as a [[metanarrative]] to justify [[atonality]]. The musicologist [[Jim Samson]] describes:

{{quote|As the ear becomes acclimatized to a sonority within a particular context, the sonority will gradually become 'emancipated' from that context and seek a new one. The emancipation of the [[Dominant (music)|dominant]]-quality [[Consonance and dissonance|dissonance]]s has followed this pattern, with the dominant seventh developing in status from a [[counterpoint|contrapuntal]] note in the sixteenth century to a quasi-consonant [[harmonic]] note in the early nineteenth. By the later nineteenth century the higher numbered dominant-quality dissonances had also achieved harmonic status, with resolution delayed or omitted completely. The greater autonomy of the dominant-quality dissonance contributed significantly to the weakening of traditional tonal function within a purely diatonic context.{{sfn|Samson|1977|pp=146–147}}}}

==Overview==
Composers such as [[Charles Ives]], [[Dane Rudhyar]], [[Duke Ellington]], and [[Lou Harrison]] connected the emancipation of the dissonance with the emancipation of society and humanity. Michael Broyles calls Ives' [[Tone cluster|tone-cluster]]-rich song "Majority" as "an incantation, a mystical statement of belief in the masses or the people".{{sfn|Broyles|1996|p=125}} Duke Ellington, after playing some of his pieces for a journalist, said, "That's the Negro's life ... Hear that chord! Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part".{{sfn|Ellington|1993|p=150}} Lou Harrison described [[Carl Ruggles]]'s counterpoint as "a community of singing lines, living a life of its own, . . . careful not to get ahead or behind in its rhythmic cooperation with the others".{{sfn|Harrison|1946|p=8}} Rudhyar gave the subtitle "A New Principle of Musical and Social Organization" to his book ''Dissonant Harmony'', writing, "Dissonant music is thus the music of true and spiritual Democracy; the music of universal brotherhoods; music of Free Souls, not of personalities. It abolishes tonalities, exactly as the real Buddhistic Reformation abolished castes into the Brotherhood of Monks; for Buddhism is nothing but spiritual Democracy".{{sfn|Rudhyar|1928|pp=10–11}}

Just as the [[harmonic series (music)|harmonic series]] was and is used as a justification for consonance, such as by Rameau, among others,{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} the harmonic series is often used as physical or psychoacoustic justification for the gradual emancipation of [[interval (music)|intervals]] and [[chord (music)|chords]] found further and further up the harmonic series over time, such as is argued by [[Henry Cowell]] in defense of his [[tone cluster]]s.{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} Some argue further that they are not dissonances, but consonances higher up the harmonic series and thus more complex.{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} The musicologist [[Jacques Chailley]],{{sfn|Chailley|1951|p=12}} cited by [[Jean-Jacques Nattiez]],{{sfn|Nattiez|1990}} gives the following diagram, a specific timeline he proposes:

[[File:Chailley harmonic series emancipationt.PNG|thumb|center|400px|[[Timeline]] of the "emancipation of the dissonance": [[unison]], [[octave]], [[perfect fifth]], [[major third]], [[minor seventh]], [[ninth]], [[eleventh]], [[twelfth (disambiguation)#Music|twelfth]] and [[Prehistoric music]], [[music of ancient Greece]], [[Medieval music]] (c. 500–1400), [[Renaissance music]] (1400-1600), [[Baroque music]] (c. 1600–1760), [[Classical music]] (c. 1730–1820), [[Romantic music]] (c. 1815–1910), [[Impressionist music]] (c. 1880–1900), [[20th-century music]].]]

[[File:Overtone series and Western music development.png|thumb|center|400px|The composer [[Paul Cooper (composer)|Paul Cooper]] proposes the following timeline:{{sfn|Cooper|1973|pp=6–7}}<br/>

A) unison and octave singing ([[magadizing]]) in [[Music of ancient Greece|Greek music]] and [[Ambrosian chant|Ambrosian]] and [[Greek chant]],<br/>
B) [[contrary motion|parallel]] fourths and [[consecutive fifths|fifths]] in [[organum]] "from c. 850"<br/>
C) "[[triad (music)|triadic]] music; from c. 1400"<br/>
D) [[seventh chord|chordal seventh]], from c. 1600<br/>
E) chordal [[ninth]], from c. 1750<br/>
F) [[whole-tone scale]], from c. 1880"<br/>
G) total [[chromatic scale|chromaticism]], [[twelve-tone technique]], and [[microtone]]s in the early 20th-century.]]

A 1996 book by Thomas J. Harrison, ''1910, the Emancipation of Dissonance'', uses Schoenberg's "revolution" to trace other movements in the arts around that time.

==References==
===Citations===
{{reflist}}

===Sources===
{{Refbegin}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Broyles|1996}}|reference=Broyles, Michael. 1996. "Charles Ives and the American Democratic Tradition", in ''Charles Ives and His World'', ed. J. Peter Burkholder. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Chailley|1951}}|reference=[[Jacques Chailley|Chailley, Jacques]]. 1951. ''Traité historique d'analyse musicale''. Paris: Leduc.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Cooper|1973}}|reference=Cooper, Paul. 1973. ''Perspectives in Music Theory: An Historical-Analytical Approach''. New York: Dodd, Mead. {{ISBN|0-396-06752-2}}.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Ellington|1993}}|reference=Ellington, Duke 1993. "Interview in Los Angeles: On Jump for Joy, Opera, and Dissonance as a 'Way of Life,'" reprinted in ''The Duke Ellington Reader'', ed. Mark Tucker, 150. New York: Oxford University Press.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Harrison|1946}}|reference=Harrison, Lou. 1946. ''About Carl Ruggles''. Yonkers, N.Y.: Oscar Baradinsky at the Alicat Bookshop.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Nattiez|1990}}|reference=Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. 1990. ''Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music'' (''Musicologie générale et sémiologie'', 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate. {{ISBN|0-691-02714-5}}.}}
*{{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Rudhyar|1928}}|reference=Rudhyar, Dane. 1928. ''Dissonant Harmony: A New Principle of Musical and Social Organization''. Carmel, California: Hamsa Publications.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Samson|1977}}|reference=Samson, Jim. 1977. ''Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920''. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. {{ISBN|0-393-02193-9}}.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Schoenberg|1975}}|reference=Schoenberg, Arnold. 1975. ''Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg''. Edited by [[Leonard Stein (musicologist)|Leonard Stein]], with translations by Leo Black. New York: St. Martins Press; London: Faber & Faber. {{ISBN|0-520-05294-3}}. Expanded from the 1950 Philosophical Library (New York) publication edited by [[Dika Newlin]]. The volume carries the note "Several of the essays ... were originally written in German (translated by Dika Newlin)" in both editions.}}
{{Refend}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Harrison|1996}}|reference=Harrison, Thomas J. 1996. ''1910, the Emancipation of Dissonance''. Berkeley: University of California Press.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Lockspeiser|1962}}|reference=Lockspeiser, Edward. 1962. ''Debussy: His Life and Mind'', p. 207. {{ISBN|0-304-91878-4}} for Vol. 1. cited in Nadeau, Roland (Sep., 1979), "Debussy and the Crisis of Tonality", p. 71, ''Music Educators Journal'', Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 69–73.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Oja|1999}}|reference=Oja, Carol J. 1999. "Dane Rudhyar's Vision of American Dissonance." ''American Music'' Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer), pp. 129–45.}}
* {{wikicite|ref={{harvid|Stegemann|2013}}|reference=Stegemann, Benedikt. 2013. ''Theory of Tonality: Theoretical Studies''. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel. {{ISBN|978-3-7959-0963-5}}.}}
{{Refend}}

{{Atonality}}
{{portal bar|Classical music|Music}}

[[Category:Metanarratives]]
[[Category:Post-tonal music theory]]
[[Category:Arnold Schoenberg]]
[[Category:Anton Webern]]