Musical consonance comprises harmony and sensory consonance from separate domains

Evidence

Although there are different types of musical style, all musicians can distinguish between consonant and non-consonant sounds. It seems that this musical consonance is based on two parts; one which comes from musical acoustics and is related to harmony, the other coming from psychoacoustics, calleel sensory consonance. Figure 16.47 illustrates the concept of musical consonance in more detail. Harmony is based on three musical components. Tonal affinity refers to relationship that sounds have, for example octave equivalence or fifthor fourth-similarity. The second contribution from musical acoustics is compatibility. This expression characterizes the effect that in a tonal piece of music, tones can be replaced by other compatible tones without seriously interfering with harmony. Compatibility may also be called the phenomenon of reversibility of chords. Therefore, compatibility may also be called tolerability or interchangeability. The third contribution from musical acoustics to harmony is the “root” - relationship of tones or sequences of tones. This means that key notes are assigned to musical chords. Many of these have the same musical root. Examples for this are the normal bass symbols and the harmony denotation by letters and figures. The perception of root is often ambiguous and the perception of chord roots has a “virtual” character, in the sense that all that has to be produced is the perception of a clearly distinct pitch, which is often a virtual pitch. These three components form harmony, which may be defined more clearly by using this interrelation. — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2039

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the two-part decomposition of musical consonance and names harmony’s three components (tonal affinity, compatibility, root).