Consonance in Tonal Jazz

This article was downloaded by: [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]
On: 22 June 2014, At: 21:06

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Jazz Perspectives
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjaz20
Consonance in Tonal Jazz: A Critical

Survey of Its Semantic History
James McGowan
Published online: 24 Apr 2008.
To cite this article: James McGowan (2008) Consonance in Tonal Jazz: A Critical Survey of Its
Semantic History, Jazz Perspectives, 2:1, 69-102, DOI: 10.1080/17494060801949059
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060801949059
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
Jazz Perspectives
Vol. 2, No. 1, May 2008, pp. 69102
Consonance in Tonal Jazz: A Critical

Survey of Its Semantic History
Downloaded by [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] at 21:06 22 June 2014
James McGowan
The terms consonance and dissonance have been subjected to a greater number
of interpretations than virtually any others in the history of music theory. Although
in a general and inclusive sense, consonance means agreement in sound, many
specific and exclusive meanings of consonance have been employed in vastly different
contexts. For one such context in particular, the analysis of tonal music, modern
scholarship in music theory has used one meaning more than others. This normative,
Schenkerian understanding dictates that major and minor triads and their
constituent intervals are the only consonances. For most common-practice tonal
music up to the late nineteenth century, this view often leads to fruitful analytic
results. However, when applying the same definition to the analysis of other music
that is entirely tonal in structure and syntax, the result is problematic as some pieces
may not be comprised of any consonant chords whatsoever. This is certainly the
problem with analyzing most tonal jazz1 that consistently and idiomatically features
chords with four or more notes as syntactic resolutions from dissonant harmonies.
The three sample cases of Example 1 present an inescapable harmonic issue: how
does one account for the variety of chords that are employable at moments of
consonance? This problem is intensified because most tonal music seems to employ
only triads in this role. These examples, however, feature apparently consonant tonic
chords that include upper structures beyond the triad.2 The excerpts include both
major and minor keys, taken from the beginning, middle, and end of their
performances, and are intended to represent a cross-section of tonal-jazz pieces, at
least regarding small groups featuring piano. In each case, a dominant chord
implicates the arrival on the tonic and the resulting resolution provides a sense of
repose. However, beyond the triad, these apparently consonant tonic chords also
1
Martin notes: the various styles of tonal jazz [include] the New Orleans and Chicago styles, swing,
bop, hard bop, gospel jazz, and blues. See Henry Martin, Jazz Harmony: A Syntactic Background,
Annual Review of Jazz Studies 4 (1988): 9. This list is not exhaustive but it does provide a useful
framework to understand the term. For the purposes of this paper, tonal jazz does not include other
styles that have been associated with jazz, particularly traditional blues (without functional harmony),
rock, and other popular musics. A compatible definition is jazz that seeks closure, as put forward by
Ajay Heble in Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice (New York: Routledge,
2000), 5260.
2
Steven Schenkel notes that when [upper structures are] added to triads they strengthen the nonresolving quality of the chordsi.e., the ability of the chord to stand alone as a complete and interesting
musical sound. See Steven M. Schenkel, The Tools of Jazz (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983),
40.
ISSN 1749-4060 print/1749-4079 online # 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17494060801949059
70
Consonance in Tonal Jazz
Example 1A Tempus Fugit, Bud Powell Trio, May 1949, beginning. Cadence in D
minor. Example 1B Isnt It Romantic? Bill Evans Trio, May 30, 1963, mm. 1617 (first
chorus). Cadence in E-flat major. Example 1C Ahmads Blues, Ahmad Jamal Trio,
September 6, 1958, ending. Cadence in C major. Tempus Fugit, by Earl Bud Powell
Copyright # 1949 (renewed) by Embassy Music Corporation (BMI) and Music Sales
Corporation (ASCAP). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted
with permission.
include a chord tone of an added (major) 6th, major 7th, and minor 7th above the
root, respectively. Further, Example 1c also includes an additional major 9th
extension.3
From the perspective of traditional theory, these arrival tonic harmonies are clearly
dissonant structures, and are sometimes identified as unresolved or frozen
3
In jazz terminology, added sixths, ninths, and thirteenths are assumed to be major unless otherwise
specified. Thirteenths appearing in tonic chords are generally referred to as sixths.
Jazz Perspectives
71
dissonances. This is counterintuitive to many jazz musicians who consider them to be

both idiomatic and contextually stable in tonal jazzconsonances in their own right.
Referring to such harmony as dissonances obscures the analysis of jazz as tonal
music, for it assumes that standard jazz chords serving as syntactically stable
harmonies require further resolution (which they never receive). Other theorists
evade this problem by recognizing the stability of some of these harmonies, but
conscientiously avoid using the term consonance altogether. This apologist
approach devalues the potential for meaningful analytical insight yielded by these
categories, and refuses to accept tonal jazz on its own terms.
As a solution to problems such as these, scholarly discourse about tonal jazz needs
a new conception of consonance and dissonance. Such a conception should be in line
with the venerable history of the terms and with factors specific to the musical
language of tonal jazz. Accordingly, this paper surveys the complex semantic history
of consonance and dissonance,4 specifically as it is applicable to understanding
what consonance is and how it is employed in tonal jazz. Distilled from this survey,
this article argues that consonance and dissonance refer to stable/passive and unstable/
active harmonic entities within the musical grammar of a distinct cultural system, as
influenced by sonorous euphony. By sonorous euphony I mean simply what
sounds pleasant when accounting for its context. The definition reflects a number
of distinct traditions of conceptions of consonance and dissonance.5
Many of the compositional features that the historic meanings of consonance
sought to explain remain relevant in more recent music, and pre-existing conceptions
are juxtaposed with newer ones. Though some confusion results from using the same
term to describe very different phenomena, the semantic breadth of consonance
nonetheless reflects the distinctive structural features of music in specific historical
and cultural contexts. Such is the case of tonal jazz, where all the major conceptions
of consonance and dissonance throughout time continue to be relevant in some way
4
No attempt is made here to provide an exhaustive history of consonance and dissonance. Rather,
only general trends of the history of consonance are surveyed as received in twentieth-century
discourse of jazz theory. For significant surveys of the semantic history of the terms, see: Claude Palisca
and Brian C. J. Moore, Consonance, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed.
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 325328; Carl Dahlhaus, Konsonanz-Dissonanz, Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 5 (Barenreiter Kassel, 199499), 565577; James Tenney, A
History of Consonance and Dissonance (New York: Excelsior Music Publishing, 1988); Norman
Cazden, The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance, International Review of the Aesthetics and
Sociology of Music 11 (1980): 123168; David E. Cohen, Metaphysics, Ideology, Discipline:
Consonance, Dissonance, and the Foundations of Western Polyphony, Theoria 7 (1993): 186; H. F.
Cohen, Quantifying Music (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984); William A.
Sethares, Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale, 2d ed. (London: Springer Verlag, 2005), especially chapter 5
Consonance and Dissonance of Harmonic Sounds; David Huron, Consonance and Dissonance:
The Main Theories, http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music829B/main.theories.html (accessed
November 30, 2004); Geza Revesz, The Consonance Problem, in Introduction to the Psychology of
Music, trans. G. I. C. de Courcy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954; reprint, Mineola, NY:
Dover, 2001), 7794; R. Plomp and W. J. M. Levelt, Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth,
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 38 (1965): 549552.
5
A more thorough exploration of these conceptual traditions can be found in James McGowan,
Dynamic Consonance in Selected Piano Performances of Tonal Jazz (Ph.D. diss., University of
Rochester, 2005).
72
to the analysis of its tonal structure. But with at least one additional significant
featureharmonic extensions in jazza new musical language is created that
necessitates an original, more relevant conception of consonance. The present paper
thus proposes that a systemic understanding of consonance and dissonance for tonal
jazz is needed, which includes a pluralism of meanings but is specific to the
contextual concerns of individual jazz practices. In this way, we can offer a resolution
to the semantic dissonance of the history of consonance in tonal jazz.
From variable understandings of consonance, to variable conceptions about
tonality in different jazz styles, to the variability of the object of analysis itself, there
are a plethora of issues that must be confronted in dealing with the problem of
consonance (and dissonance) in tonal jazz. But as David Cohen observes:
Consonance and dissonance must surely be counted among the concepts that have
exercised a particularly powerful, even a determining, influence on the theory and
practice of music in the Western world. They have always stood among the
foundational principles, the indispensable categorieses of discourse and practice, of
European polyphony, from its historical origins in the ninth-century Enchiriadis
theory of organum to the theories of Schenker and his followers, and the great tonal
works to which they apply.6
The opening section of this article critically examines different conceptual

dichotomiescontextual/universal, horizontal/vertical, sensory/musical, and fixed/
variablewhich are found in the literature that addresses consonance. The use of
this papers pluralist meaning of consonance is then supported in a survey of both
successful and unsuccessful semantic precedents within the discourse of jazz theory,
especially pedagogical and Schenkerian-oriented jazz theory. The article concludes by
supplementing the technical meaning of consonance with metaphoric meaning,
demonstrating that consonance and dissonance have both specialized and broad
implications for interpretation and possible analytical applications.
Conceptual Dichotomies in the History of Consonance and Dissonance
Within ancient Greek music theory, there were significant differences of opinion
regarding the nature of consonance. The Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras in the
fifth century B.C.E.) believed that consonance was objectively based in simple ratios of
the numbers 1 through 4. Applied to acoustics, these ratios correspond to intervals of a
perfect fourth, fifth, octave, twelfth, and double octave, as found in the overtone series.
They believed that this Natural Law theory7consonance arising from simple ratios
was universally applicable to all music (as well as manifest in other disciplines, such as
astronomy), and this belief formed a core component of their spirituality.8 Aristoxenus
(third century B.C.E.) rejected the quasi-religious foundation of the Pythagorean
6
Cohen, Metaphysics, 2.
Cazden, Definition, 146.
8
They also believed that the same ratios governed these intervals formed in any vibrating medium (e.g.,
solid bodies, stretched strings, vibrating air columns, and the heavens), which, while not true, was not
disproven until the Renaissance critique of ancient science. See Claude V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian
Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 166178.
7
Jazz Perspectives
73
conception of consonance in favor of a conception grounded in human sensory

perception. He relied on judgment of the ear to distinguish between consonant and
dissonant intervals subjectively. This Aristoxenian theory of aesthetics is thus grounded
in the musical practice of his contemporary culture, though Aristoxenus never really
spells out that practice in detail, and it is therefore subject to variation within different
musical systems that existed at different times.9 Despite these conceptual dichotomies,
however, both ideologies are substantially in agreement over which specific intervals
are consonant.10
While Pythagorean and Aristoxenian understandings have continued in different
guises within the discourse of music theory up to the present time, so have differences
of opinion as to the viability of both.11 Accepting simple ratios as universal
determinants for consonance is untenable since there are some notable musical
contexts that contradict it.12 One example of an important criticism of Natural Law
theory demonstrates that the interval of a perfect fourth, a simple tuning ratio of 4:3,
is normally treated as a dissonance in triadic tonal music. Another common criticism
of Natural Law theory is its ineffectiveness in accommodating the minor triad as
musically equal to the major triad. The Aristoxenian alternative, however, creates a
9
It is safe to say that Aristoxenus surely was unaware of how other musical traditions and cultures
functioned. Without too much of a stretch, however, one could assert the claim with the benefit of
present-day hindsight.
10
The consonance of the eleventh is one detail on which they did not agree. West provides a good
introduction to issues in ancient Greek music theory (and consonance and dissonance in particular)
M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), especially 218253. For an overview
of the conceptual differences between the Pythagorean and Aristoxenian understandings of intervallic
consonance, see Lawrence M. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 616.
11
Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff seem to argue for a Natural Psychological Law theory instead of a
Natural Law theory. They write: the fact that certain trends appear among simpler tonal systems (for
example, the frequent use of small-ratio intervals as points of harmonic stability . . . ) suggests the
possibility of an innate system of preferences among tonal systems analogous to the principles of
markedness in phonological systems of language. Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative
Theory of Tonal Music (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 296. Interesting examples of jazz theorists making
reference to Natural Law theory can be found with George Russells seminal work (in his preference for
the acoustically supported #4 in the Lydian tonic as opposed to the natural-4), as well as more recent
incarnations such as Norm Vincents exposition on Lydian-Dominant theory. George Russell, The
Lydian-Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization: The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity, vol. 1, 4th ed.
(Brookline, MA: Concept Publishing, 2002); and Norm Vincent, Lydian-Dominant Theory for
Improvisation, http://www.lydiandominant.com/theory/lydian-dominant_theory.html (accessed
February 26, 2006). Cazden counters the claim of musical universals by stressing that the perception
of consonance is solely the propriety of cultural practice and not linked to any psycho-acoustic
phenomenaa claim from which he backpedaled in later writing. Norman Cazden, Musical
Consonance and Dissonance (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1947), 2; and Cazden, The
Definition of Consonance and Dissonance.
12
Even the very notion of simple ratios is problematic because intervals have different ratios in
different tuning systems. The major third and minor third are 5:6 and 4:5 in just tuning, but 64:81 and
27:32 in Pythagorean tuning. These differences can partially account for why the thirds were classified as
dissonances in ancient Greek theory and consonant in Renaissance theory with just tuning. Gioseffo
Zarlinos version of a single explanatory system for consonance was the senario, an extension of the
tetraktys, that allowed ratios of numbers up to 8, thus including just major and minor thirds. Tenney,
History, 5052.
74
different problem. Relegating the determination of consonance to the subjectivity of

ones ear seriously undermines its use as a term with any substantive meaning.
Taking both the universality of simple ratios and context of culture into consideration
offers a more balanced approach to consonance. Further, some studies have shown that
there is some correspondence between subjective perception of consonance and simple
ratios.13 Norman Cazden asserts consonance and dissonance in tonal music are
functional moments or dynamic configurations that operate on a systemic level, but he
also acknowledges that the striking evidence favoring the Natural Law theory plays a
role in perceiving relative consonance and dissonance within historical and cultural
systems.14 This present studys definition of consonance is a modification of Cazdens
systemic approach, designed specifically for the musical characteristics of tonal jazz. The
need for a unique definition arises because the terminology and discourse of musical
consonance reflect the compositional priorities of specific musical languages. This
understanding thus needs to recognize the role of simple ratios as found in the core
harmony of tonal jazz, along with the tempered surrogates of the simple ratios, but
allows for dynamic variation in the harmonic dialects of the musical language.
Another important dichotomy exists between consecutive and simultaneous
musical relationships. James Tenney offers five different conceptions of consonance
and dissonance (CDCs) that have existed in music-theoretical discourse from the
period of ancient Greece to the early twentieth century. Briefly, the conceptions
classify consonance and dissonance based the following criteria: CDC 1 melodic
intervals; CDC 2 simultaneous dyads; CDC 3 contrapuntal treatment of intervals;
CDC 4 harmonic triads; and CDC 5 acoustical tonal color. Tenneys CDC 1 (the
Ancient Greek conception) differs from CDCs 25 in that his first conception is the
only one that is exclusively melodic.15 As Western music developed into a primarily
polyphonic art, discourse about consonance and dissonance reflected this new
priority of vertical structures.16 By the common-practice period, a prevailing
conception of consonance was that of a notes agreement with a chord (CDC 4). As
such, a note is shown either to be part of or distinct from a triad, which is conceived
13
For an overview, see Palisca and Moore, Consonance, 326327.

Cazden, Definition, respectively 162, 148. As discussed below, Cazden does not go far enough,
however, in accommodating sensory consonance to his systemic approach. Conversely, Lerdahl and
Jackendoffs claim of innate musical universals, including the cognition of tonal hierarchy, do not
sufficiently accommodate idiom specificity. Lerdahl and Jackendoff, Generative Theory, 278301.
15
Tenney, History. Tenneys definitions of CDCs 2 and 4 do not exclusively involve simultaneous
relationships, but unlike CDC 1, they can (and are most often used to) describe dyads and triads.
Tenney proposes that CDC 1, as all the conceptions, continues to be used in modern times. This can be
evidenced in Paul Hindemiths Series 2 ranking of consonance and dissonance. Paul Hindemith, The
Craft of Musical Composition, bk. 1, trans. Arthur Mendel (New York: Associated Music Publishers,
1942).
16
One could postulate that the rise of each new conception of consonance was precipitated by a
significant change in musical practice. For example, CDC 2 developed as a result of the rise of dyadic
music, CDC 3 developed as a result of contrapuntal practice in polyphony, CDC 4 due to the
development of harmony, and CDC 5 due to the increased recognition of the contribution of tonal color.
The rise of tonal jazz thus necessitates a suitable revision of the concept of consonance. See Tenney,
History.
14
Jazz Perspectives
75
either as a collection of consonant intervals or as a consonance itself. Understanding

the chord itself (originally, the triad) as a consonance ultimately originated in JeanPhilippe Rameau, but its first incarnation as an explicit reference is found in the work
of Moritz Hauptmann.17 Hauptmanns directly intelligible intervals point to an
understanding of the chord as consonance by Karl Mayrberger and, most completely
and influentially, by Hugo Riemann.18
However, even when consonance refers to simultaneous collections of notes in
tonal music, the horizontal dimension is still relevant. Rameau, for example,
conceived of consonant progression19 as a fundamental bass progression by
consonant intervals, ultimately leading to the tonic. David Cohen notes:
Many modern theories of tonal harmony [including those by Schenker and
Riemann] invoke the structural power of the tonic to explain the perceived
need of even the consonant dominant triad to progress to tonic, exploiting a
modern distinction between the merely acoustical consonance of major and
minor triads and the contextual consonance that ultimately belongs only to the
tonic.20
Thus, this unusual aspect of CDC 1 has a relationship to the directed motion of
CDC 3. In CDC 3, intervals that are designated as dissonant require resolution to
consonant intervals, just as the Aristotelian philosophical axiom states the imperfect
seeks its perfection. But beyond the fact that dissonances being imperfect simply
tend toward perfection (consonances), as Cohen notes, the imperfect thing strives
by nature toward a particular, specific perfect thing; more precisely, it strives toward,
or seeks, the state of being that represents its own perfection with regard to some
specific imperfection (emphasis in original).21 Thus, the horizontal dimension is
discernible not only in chord progressions that lead specifically toward tonic, but also
in the proper resolution of dissonant verticals.
While little need exists for a theory to accommodate tonic chords greater than
triads in common-practice music, there is most certainly a need in the tonal-jazz
repertoire. Wolf Burbat writes:
In the European musical tradition, a fourth tone was added to the subdominant
and dominant chords . . . These are called characteristic dissonances, since the
function of each (in the context of classical music) is recognizable from the chord
17
See Dale A. Jorgenson, Moritz Hauptmann of Leipzig, in Studies in the History and Interpretation of
Music, vol. 2 (Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 113 ff.
18
This is discussed in Robert Wason, Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and
Schoenberg (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1995; orig. pub. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
1985), 100101; Karl Mayrberger, Lehrbuch der musikalischen Harmonik (Pressburg and Leipzig: Gustav
Heckenast, 1878). For an overview of Riemanns understanding, see Alexander Rheding, Hugo Riemann
and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially
525.
19
Tenney, History, 65.
20
David E. Cohen, The Imperfection Seeks Its Perfection: Harmonic Progression, Directed Motion,
and Aristotelian Physics, Music Theory Spectrum 23 (2001): 140, see fn. 4 in particular.
21
Cohen, The Imperfection Seeks Its Perfection, 146.
76

alone, independent of context. A major triad with added sixth was automatically a
subdominant, one with added seventh a dominant. In jazz things are not so simple,
since the sixth can be added to a tonic chord, and the seventh as blue note can be
added to any function.22
With the increased use of harmonic tensions in dissonances in both classical and
popular music at the end of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the
twentieth, resolutions also moved beyond the basic triad. In a recent paper dealing
with the phenomenon of dissonant tonics, Daniel Harrison suggests:
consonance could be relativized without damaging the tonal-system environment.
In other words, tonics could be made from chords that were more consonant
relative to non-tonics, but not necessarily triads. This accomplishment, of course,
goes hand-in-glove with the well-known increase in dissonant chord formations
during the nineteenth century; increasing levels of dissonance allow a higher setting
of the consonance band to maintain the same rough absolute distance between
imperfect, non-tonic and perfect, tonic sonorities, the perfection of the latter,
in essence, being defined down.23
Although he did not write this specifically with jazz tonality in mind, it is nonetheless
very appropriate to tonal jazz. Jazz is, after all, a form of twentieth-century music. The
predictability of the jazz cadence, resulting from the use of common 12-bar blues
and 32-bar song forms, has encouraged harmonic developments to occur in the
vertical dimension more so than to the harmonic structure in the form of pieces. But
the setting of the consonance band does not occur in an ad hoc manner; rather
there is some sense that resolutions occur in appropriate balance to the degree of
tension.
Since Hermann Helmholtzs groundbreaking work in psychoacoustics,24 a conception of sensory consonance was based upon the euphony of individual sonorities. This
conception is vastly different from musical consonance, since it does not consider
syntax. David Butler effectively defines these two meanings of consonance:
1. Sensory consonance, or euphony: the absence of acoustical interference in the
form of beats or roughness generated by two or more tones.
22
Wolf Burbat, Die Harmonik des Jazz, 4th ed. (Munich: DTV and Barenreiter, 1994), trans. Robert
Wason (New York: Scarecrow Press, forthcoming), 10. The term characteristic dissonance originates
in Jean-Philippe Rameau, Treatise on Harmony, trans. Philip Gossett (New York: Dover Publications,
1971; originally published 1722). Burbats portrayal of characteristic dissonances in classical music
harmony is an oversimplification, particularly in the context of his analytical approach based in function
theory as influenced by Riemann. For more on Riemanns use of the term characteristic dissonance,
see Scott Burnham, Method and Motivation in Hugo Riemanns History of Harmonic Theory, Music
Theory Spectrum 14 (Spring 1992): 57.
23
Daniel Harrison, Dissonant Tonics and Post-Tonal Tonality, a slightly modified version of a paper
read at the Music Theory Society of New York State, April 28, 2002, http://pantheon.yale.edu/,dh287/
research/DisTonic.pdf, p. 2 (accessed November 30, 2004).
24
Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, trans. Alexander J. Ellis (New York: Dover
Publications, 1954). Note that acoustics and psychoacoustics differ in that the latter deals with the
perception of acoustics by the listener in the ear. Tenney calls this sense CDC 5.
Jazz Perspectives
77
Table 1 Dualism of Terminology (from Cazden).
I [psychoacoustics]
Euphonie
Eufonia
Consonance physique
Konsonanz Dissonanz
Konsonanz Dissonanz,
Konsonanzempfindung
Konsonanz Objectiv, Konsonanzgefuhl
Dissonanz
akustischer Konsonanz Dissonanz
Dissonanzkonstatieren
consonanza acustica
Sensorial consonance
Einfach Kompliziert
akustische Konsonanz
II [contextual / functional]
[Source]
Dynamie
Dinamia
Consonance esthetique
Harmonie Disharmonie
Konkordanz Diskordanz,
Harmoniegefuhl
Harmonie Subjektiv, Harmoniegefuhl
Auflosungbedurfnis
harmonischer Konsonanz Dissonanz
Dissonanzbehandlung
consonanza armonica
Aesthetic consonance
Harmoniefuhrung
musikalische Konsonanz
Choron, de la Fage
Basevi
Renaud
Wundt
Stumpf
Hennig
Jonquie`re
Louis, Thuille
Kurth
Gentili
Guernsey
Deutsch
Null
2. Musical consonance: the learned impression that a musical tone or chord serves
well as a stable point within a musical composition, based on tonal context.25
Cazden criticizes the use of sensory consonance, claiming that it is not beneficial for
understanding how music functions, and is of use only in a pre-musical setting of
intonation. Tenney counters Cazdens argument by noting that the non-functional
sense is supported by an enduring historical traditionbeginning in the ninth
century,26 to which Helmholtzs work effectively belongs. The dichotomy between
these two very different understandings of consonance appears to be firmly entrenched.
Many scholars have tried to resolve the definitional ambiguity of consonance and
dissonance, believing that clarity may result if the concepts are assigned distinctive
names. Carl Stumpf27 retained Konsonanz for its psycho-acoustic sense (where for
him it represents the purity of specific two-tone combinations) and designated
Konkordanz for its contextual sense of harmonic resolution (concordance and
discordance applied to the embodiments of chordal action that were perceived to
operate on the higher level of functional harmony).28 Shown in Table 1, Cazden lists
several other early proposals for terms corresponding to these distinctions.29 But
despite many attempts at new terminology, none have caught on. Excepting for the
occasional use of definitional modifiers to specify meaning, consonance continues
25
David Butler, The Musicians Guide to Perception and Cognition (New York: Schirmer, 1992), 224. This
study focuses on chord as opposed to musical tone, but otherwise concurs with these definitions.
The term sensory consonance was first employed by E. Terhardt and is equivalent to tonal
consonance used by Plomp and Levelt. E. Terhardt, Pitch, Consonance, and Harmony, Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America 55 (1974): 10619; and Plomp and Levelt, Tonal Consonance.
26
Tenney, History, 99. He is referring to CDC 2, which characterizes consonance in terms tonal
blending and fusion.
27
Carl Stumpf, Konsonanz und Konkordanz, Beitrage zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft 6 (1911):
11650.
28
29
Ibid., 152.
78
to be used today to account for everything from perfect intervals to tonic harmony,
and from ratios of small numbers to aesthetic beauty.
Despite this dichotomy, Claude Palisca and Brian Moore observe that the different
meanings commingle and create a dynamic understanding:
Musical consonance is related to judgments of the pleasantness or unpleasantness of sounds presented in a musical context; it depends strongly on musical
experience and training as well as on sensory consonance. These two aspects of
consonance are difficult to separate, and in many situations judgments of
consonance depend on an interaction of sensory processes and musical
experience.30
Carl Dahlhaus reinforces this argument, declaring: A consonance is an interval

determined by its fundamental nature and (not or) tradition.31 The systemic
conception of consonance advocated here embraces Dahlhauss pluralistic view, but
applies it to a sonorous collection of any cardinality of tones, not just intervals. I
believe that a useful understanding of tonal structure for tonal jazz recognizes that the
euphony of the individual sonority is directly connected with harmonic syntax in a
dynamic relationship between dissonant and consonant functions. As a result, the
perception of consonance is contingent upon the realization of harmonic expectation
as contextually appropriate in chordal membership, intervallic configuration, and
sonorous euphony. For example, a Herbie Hancock chord voicing will likely sound
out of place in a Fats Waller solo.
Over the centuries, Natural Law theory has been used to justify consonance both as
a fixed identity as well as a variable. Fixed identities are evident in the Pythagorean
sense (with ratios comprised of one through four), the contrapuntal sense (the
distinction among perfect consonances, imperfect consonances, and dissonances in
CDC 3), and the harmonic sense (only the triad is consonant). The latter case is
particularly evident among some proponents of Schenkerian theory.32 Others
disregard arguments for consonance based upon the chord of nature, but they
30
Palisca and Moore, Consonance, 326.

Dahlhaus continues: Fundamental nature, which constitutes a necessary (but not wholly sufficient)
condition of consonance, is the gradation of intervals according to degree of sonority that can be
measured in three ways. [These are: simplicity of ratios; fusion between pitches sounding together; and
coincidence of overtones.] Consonance is dictated by nature in that only higher degrees of sonority can
be consonances; but consonance is based on tradition and history in that the number of degrees of
sonority classified as consonances, as well as the reasons for their classification as such, are variable.
Excerpt from an unpublished translation by James McGowan and Elizabeth Sander of Dahlhaus,
Konsonanz-Dissonanz, 566.
32
Schenker writes: The human ear can follow Nature as manifested to us in the overtone series only up
to the major third as the ultimate limit; in other words, up to that overtone which results from the fifth
division. This means that those overtones resulting from higher subdivisions are too complicated to be
perceived by our ear, . . . the overtones, 7, 11, 13, 14, etc., remain totally extraneous to our ear.
Heinrich Schenker, Harmony, ed. and annotated by Oswald Jonas, trans. Elisabeth Mann Borgese
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 25. Disciples of Schenker continued this line of thought, as seen , for
example, in Adele T. Katz, Heinrich Schenkers Method of Analysis, The Musical Quarterly, 21 (July
1935): 31129. For criticism on philosophical grounds, see Jamie C. Kassler, Music, Science, Philosophy:
Models in the Universe of Thought (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), 22540.
31
Jazz Perspectives
79
agree that the major and minor triads (or their constituent intervals) are the only
consonances in common-practice tonality.33
Interestingly, tuning ratios have also been used to denote variable degrees of
consonance34 by theorists in the middle ages (such as John of Garlands
categorization of dyads, evident in Tenneys CDC 2), by Hindemith (his
categorization of intervals, especially his Series II), and by evolutionary theorists
such as Jacques Chailley (who recognized the expansion of the harmonic palette of
consonances based on the overtone series throughout music history).35 These
traditions are connected with the sense of consonance as a sonic quality in the
complex harmonic tone, but there is also an element of subjectivity here in
determining the point in the continuum at which a sound is considered to be a
consonance or a dissonance.
The assertion of fixed values for consonance is only tenable when considering
examples from a closed and otherwise distinct system, such as the musical languages
of ancient Greek modality, Renaissance polyphony, and common-practice tonality.
Without such a system, variable values for consonance are inevitable. This is
especially clear by analogy with spoken and written languages. When distinct
historical and regional linguistic groups are identified, aspects of their language can
be confidently identified as fixed values. But if the language under consideration is
actively undergoing linguistic change, fixed values cannot be asserted with
confidence; the accuracy of these values will still be changing and linguistic
differences may exist without a clearly defined boundary. Beyond this, spoken
language is particularly susceptible to variance even within a cultural group due to
the spontaneous nature of its use.
Since jazz is often characterized by the fluid nature of its collective creation and
communication, the musical experience is already unpredictable. Fixed values can be
asserted for some aspects, since tonal jazz is in many ways a discrete musical
language; one could argue that after the mid 1960s, there was little innovation in
tonal jazz and explorations of tonal structure resulted in new musical languages (such
as modality, atonality, polytonality). But in other respects, the fluid cultural dynamics
of tonal jazz practice results in mutable values. Thus, the definition proposed in this
paper suggests that in tonal jazz there are inherently stable chord tones that form the
fixed triadic core of harmonic consonances, and there are also contextually stable
chord tones that appear as variable members of consonances. When these two
components are taken together, this results in a collection of chord types that serve a
common harmonic function. One could refer to these chordal varieties as harmonic
dialects, continuing an analogy of the study of musical languages to the study of
33
See, for example, Matthew Brown, Rothsteins Paradox and Neumeyers Fallacies, Integral 2
(1998): 95132.
34
See the explanation of consonance in Dahlhaus, Konsonanz-Dissonanz; cf. translation of article
in fn. 31, above.
35
See Tenney, History; Hindemith, Craft; and Jacques Chailley, Historical Treatise of Harmonic Analysis,
trans. Sidney Kleinman (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1986).
80
language.36 Determination of the contextually stable chord tones is therefore one of

the main analytical pursuits that can follow from this study.
Relativity and Dissonance in Jazz Parlance

In jazz parlance, an important facet of musical structure is relative stability. Both
consonance and dissonance are commonly qualified with an adjective that tries to
capture the degree to which it is stable or unstable. (Qualifiers can be attached to an
interval, a note in relation to a chord, or the chord itself.) A classic example of this
relativity, the triadic dialect is considered by many to be more stable than the majorseventh dialect (which certainly has more tonal roughness), even though it may be
less stylistically appropriate.
What is certainly apparent among the jazz-pedagogical sources is that they
generally discuss dissonance, in its relative sense, much more than consonance,
in any sense. For example, Kenneth Stanton writes: The harmonic interval of the
Major Ninth . . . is not dissonant enough to warrant altering the 11th, and he later
refers to intervals that are significantly dissonant.37 Examples of Ted Pease and Ken
Pulligs references to dissonance include a mildly dissonant effect, strong
dissonance, more dissonant, and maximum dissonance.38 Similarly, Bert
Ligon uses the phrase absurdly dissonant to describe a final chord in a big band
chartan octatonic collection, stacked in thirds.39 Although not limited to discourse
in jazz theory,40 the use of adjective qualifiers is a common rhetorical strategy in such
discourse to address the consistent relativity of dissonance in the music. This strategy
is useful to describe sonorities in musics with a higher setting of the consonance
band, as noted earlier by Harrison.
The primarily pedagogical sources of jazz theory, such as those sampled above, use
dissonance to refer to more than simply degrees of tension, but rather a variety of
phenomena. Some authors use more than one meaning of dissonance, usually
without explicit definition. Gordon Delamont defines dissonant in the sense of
instability, where any chord that contains one or more (of these) dissonant
intervals will be a dissonant chord.41 Fifty-eight pages later, however, he allows the
36
For more on dialects as a possible application to the study of jazz harmony, see James McGowan,
Understanding Jazz Styles through Sociolinguistic Models, Discourses in Music 4 (Fall 2002),
http://www.discourses.ca/v4n1a1.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
37
Kenneth Stanton, Jazz Theory: A Creative Approach (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1982), 64 and
68.
38
Ted Pease and Ken Pullig, Modern Jazz Voicings: Arranging for Small and Medium Ensembles
(Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2001), 70, 70, 93, and 118.
39
Bert Ligon, Jazz Theory Resources: Tonal, Harmonic, Melodic and Rhythmic Organization of Jazz, vols. 1
and 2 (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2001), 475.
40
See, for example, Edward T. Cone, Sound and Syntax: An Introduction to Schoenbergs Harmony,
Perspectives of New Music 13 (Autumn-Winter 1974): 26 and 35. Here, Cone employs phrases such as
mild dissonances and hyper-dissonant in relation to dissonant (non-triadic) normal sonorities in
the early music of Schoenberg.
41
Gordon Delamont, Modern Harmonic Techniques, vol. 1 (Delevan, NY: Kendor Music, 1965), 58.
Jazz Perspectives
81
other meaning of relative tension to appear when he comments on an especially spicy

example of jazz voicing: A chord with only one sharp dissonance in it will be more
biting than a chord containing only mild dissonance, and the above voicing has
TWO sharp dissonances!42 Bert Ligon employs both fixed and variable meanings of
dissonance as wellfirst in the conventional sense as an unstable interval requiring
resolution and then as meaning a tense, colorful sonority; in one case he even does so
in the same sentence. In describing the motion of a ii7 to V#11, he writes: If it [the
chordal 7th] resolves up, the dissonance is compounded by the unexpected ascension
and the resolution to the very dissonant #11.43 In an extreme case, Richard Lawn
and Jeffrey Hellmer use five different meanings for the terms creating significant
semantic ambiguity.44 In the studies of jazz by its pedagogues and practical theorists,
terminological specificity is generally not a concern. In most cases, however, the
context of the passage makes clear the particular meaning in use, even though the
terms are not specifically defined. For instance, Ligon uses consonance and
dissonance to refer to (1) the relationship between a given note and either a chord
or another note (e.g., a very dissonant #11th over a minor triad, and a relatively
consonant 6th above a major triad); (2) the quality of a sonority (it can create a
vague and dissonant sonority); and (3) the functional identity of a harmony
(chords progress away from the tonic chords to other chords of relative dissonance
. . . [i.e.,] to other diatonic chords or modulations to close or remote keys . . .
and then return to re-establish the tonic at the end).45 Still, in this and other
sources, consonance and dissonance seem to be most consistently used in the sense of
a relative quality.
In its relative sense, the degrees of dissonance exist within a continuuma
harmony can be more or less tense. Therefore, this dissonance is partly the result of
the intervallic configuration of a particular chord, in which the presence of more
unstable intervals (in the sense of acoustic harshness) creates a more dissonant chord,
but which is qualified by cultural criteria. Two examples of how jazz theorists have
42
Ibid., 116.
Ligon, Jazz Theory Resources, 211.
44
Richard J. Lawn and Jeffrey L. Hellmer, Jazz Theory and Practice (Los Angeles: Alfred Publishing,
1993). The five uses include: (a) in introducing intervals, they categorize them into the standardized
binary distinction of consonant versus dissonant (p. 2); (b) they later use a different meaning of color when
they comment that the 6th provides no real added dissonance or tension to the major triad (p. 24); (c)
in other parts of the book, they again use dissonance to describe an intervallic quality within a chord
(p. 28), but soon follow this in reference to chord quality (p. 30); (d) later still, they use the term
consonance not to refer to intervals or a sonorous quality but rather to mean whether a note agrees
with a particular chord (p. 44); and, finally, (e) they burden the term consonance even further when
suggesting what notes to play in a given minor harmony in chord/scale theory: The melodic minor scale
. . . is a good choice because it includes a major 6th and is, therefore, also consonant with the minor 6/9
chord (p. 52).
45
Ligon, Jazz Theory Resources, 212, 372, and 394, respectively. Although it is clear in what senses Ligon
uses the terms by context, in a broader sense all the meanings refer to one all-embracing view that
dissonance represents some form of relative tension and consonance represents some form of relative
stability. Different meanings thus interrelate with each other to create a deeper and more dynamic
understanding, as noted earlier in the citation of Palisca and Moore, Consonance, 326.
43
82
rated the degree of dissonance are found in the works of William Russo and Henry
Martin.46 For his system of jazz arranging, Russo organizes dissonant intervals based
on an adaptation of Hindemiths classification of intervals in his Series 2.47 Martin
creates relative values for intervallic dissonance when he subdivides dissonant
intervals into modal and dissonant intervals, designating major 2nds, minor
7ths, and the perfect 4th as modal and effectively less dissonant.48 Martins
approach is clearly syntactic but moves away from the strict contrapuntal laws as
determined by the traditional fixed values. Both systems of categorization by Russo
and Martin seem to feign objectivity, despite being subjective interpretations of
musical aesthetics.49 Nonetheless, they can be used as general guidelines of one aspect
of musical style, as they do correspond to rough gradations of tension in harmonic
sonorities in the various jazz styles.
Just as dissonance can have degrees of tension, so can consonance, which is suggested
as early as the writings of the medieval theorist John of Garland. Martin has developed a
somewhat ad hoc method of rating consonance on a formalized sliding scale based on
intervallic content. White also proposes a numeric consonance rating for any style of
music that is superficially objective. Despite its apparent potential, it does not offer a
systematic approach to assigning numeric values. Attempts such as these that grapple
with the issue of variable degrees of stability50 are useful to identify the problem but offer
little or no real advantage to simply using adjective-qualifiers (which the theorists of the
middle ages did in CDC 2). Further, they can make the inherently subjective process of
musical analysis even more complicated than it already is.51
Since both dissonance and consonance are relative in the same manner, they can be
positioned at polar ends of the same scale. Palisca and Moore refer to this
phenomenon as the consonancedissonance dimension, admitting degrees of both
within the same continuum.52 In this present understanding of relativity, dissonance
corresponds to tension and consonance to its release, such that a consonant chord
can be positioned between the poles yet remain mostly stable. In this interpretation,
consonant chords can have a range of unstable qualities and yet still be placed in the
consonant side of the spectrum of tension and stability. However, a chord that would
46
William Russo, Jazz Composition and Orchestration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 32
4; and Henry Martin, Seven Steps to Heaven: A Species Approach to Twentieth-Century Analysis and
Composition, Perspectives of New Music 38 (Winter 2000): 12968.
47
See Hindemith, Craft.
48
Martin, Seven Steps to Heaven, 138.
49
Similarly, original counterpoint laws have been shown to have some basis in Natural Law but are not
entirely founded upon it. Cazden, Definition, 13740.
50
Martin, Seven Steps to Heaven, 14851; and John D. White, The Analysis of Music (Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow Press, 1984), 15.
51
Measuring consonance and dissonance has had a modicum of success in the field of sensory
consonance, although this success has not taken musical consonance into context. See, for example,
Plomp and Levelt, Tonal Consonance, 5567; and Akio Kameoka and Mamoru Kuriyagawa,
Consonance Theory, Part II: Consonance of Complex Tones and its Calculation Method, Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America 45 (1969): 14609. The relevance of sensory consonance is addressed
below.
52
Palisca and Moore, Consonance, 325.
Jazz Perspectives
83
otherwise be consonant may have significant characteristics that add tension and
bring about its reinterpretation as a dissonant chord.53
Most of the sources cited above emphasize the discussion of dissonance, in its
many semantic contexts, as opposed to consonance. In some studies, including those
by Kenneth Stanton, and Pease and Pullig cited earlier, the word consonance is not
even mentioned. The avoidance of the term may result from an unwillingness to
define it or an unstated assumption that chords are consonant unless asserted
otherwise. Still, the bias towards dissonance seems to arise from the preference jazz
musicians have for colorful, complex harmony of all functions over simple triads, and
their continuing attempts to describe these phenomena.
It is interesting the way many of these authors emphasize how dissonance (in its
qualitative sense) is a good and desirable thing. Mark Levine writes: Dissonance is not a
pejorative term; its a musical device you can use when appropriate.54 Andrew Jaffe adds:
We should not assume that music that seems unduly dissonant to us is bad, but rather
approach it with an appreciation for the fact that it reflects a different system of musical
values in which a higher degree of . . . dissonance may be a part.55 Scott Reeves emphasizes
this embrace of dissonance when, discussing improvisation choices, he writes: The tonic
(or first note) is so consonant that it lacks tension and color.56 While partly understood in
terms of its functional need for resolution, acoustic dissonance in jazz sonorities is a
desirable quality in itself, something to seek out as more musically interesting than
consonance. Many writers in jazz theory freely use both understandings. These
conceptions are borne out of jazz musicians unequivocal reliance on sound color for
personal expression, balanced by the tension and release that moves music forward. In this
realm, ideas of sonorous dissonance may even be necessary ingredients to consonance.
When considering the semantic history of consonance and dissonance in classical
music and the history of theory, this preference for tension or dissonance is quite
unique.57 The perception of the role and even value of dissonance epitomizes a
53
By analogy in the discipline of sociolinguistics, this is similar to issues with the classification of
linguistic varieties within a dialect continuum; when recognizable deviation occurs, varieties are typically
classified differently. Although determination of language or dialect types is grounded in observable data,
decisions of classification are ultimately based in interpretation.
54
Mark Levine, The Jazz Theory Book (Petaluma, CA: Sher Music, 1995), 41.
55
Andrew Jaffe, Jazz Theory (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Company, 1983), 14. This comment also
anticipates dialects of consonance as a means to explain the differing complexity allowed in consonant
chords in different musical contexts.
56
Scott D. Reeves, Creative Jazz Improvisation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 1.
57
David Cohen writes that Boethius clearly associates dissonance with those sounds that are explicitly
non-musical. Cohen further notes that it is not the word dissonance that is rejected, but he says that it is
the very idea that there could be any legitimately musical phenomenon that is not also consonant. While
this semantic and philosophical stance is quite extreme within the history of the terms, the root of this
bias against dissonance is part of an ideology that has flourished until recently. Cohen also writes that our
current normal view of the relationship of dissonance to consonance is based on the work of Schenker,
for whom the organic unity of the musical masterwork consists precisely in the dialectical interplay by
which the unity of consonance is activated and actualized via its temporal prolongation through
dissonance. This so-called normal view realizes the accidental nature and intrinsically secondary
status of dissonance with respect to consonance. Cohen, Metaphysics, 68, 7. Yet Rameau suggests
that the role of dissonance is not discounted as insignificant, only imperfect, as he writes: far from
dissonance being an embarrassment in composition, it facilitates its course. Rameau, Treatise, 217.
84
dichotomy between classical and jazz concepts. The use of the term in its positive
application for the jazz perspective provides contrast to the often negative connotation in
the classical perspective. Lubet writes: The critical difference [in harmony] is, however,
not in the root progressions, but in the jazz tendency to extend virtually every chord,
including the tonic, to at least the seventh, while the ultimate goal of tonal [European]
harmonic progression must always be the absolutely stable pure major or minor triad.58
That dissonance or tension can be desirable, existing within a spectrum of instability
and harmonic expressiveness, is clearly evident in jazz musical thought. For example, the
works of Duke Ellington and the pianism of Thelonious Monk often contain a great deal
of dissonance, by any definition. Continuation of this line of thought reveals that a very
stable consonance is typically less desirable than a chord that is more colorful.
Pedagogical Discourse about Consonance in Jazz Theory
Pedagogical (and speculative) publications in jazz theory59 provide ample discussion of
idiomatic jazz chords, and these rarely include simple triads. While their use of the word
consonance is often ad hoc and semantically inconsistent (as discussed above), there are
enough examples for us to garner a general understanding of how each author interprets it.
The best way to determine what a consonance is in these sources is to examine their often
plentiful musical examples, even when these are contrived excerpts. In this way, these
publications tend to emphasize the major-seventh sonority as the most suitable consonant
chord.Withinmajor-keycontexts,60 thesechordsareassociatedwithtonicandsubdominant
harmony, and the more thorough sources highlight the stability of the M7th on tonic
harmony in particularconsonance via syntax and sonority. Lawn and Hellmer write:
The Ima7 chord, or tonic chord, is, of course, the harmonic resting place for the
composition, or in the case of a iiV7I progression of chords, the final destination
for the cadence. The I chord typically signifies the end of a cadence; once this chord
is reached, there is no momentum to move to another chord, particularly since the
quality of the chord is a major 7th.61
Without explicitly saying that major sevenths are consonant harmonies, their
implication is that the chordal 7th is a requirement of the sonority in order for it to
be suitable for the functional status of tonic, and thereby providing proper tonal closure.
Pease and Pullig hold the view that notes a M7th above the root are chord tones, and
58
Lubet, Body and Soul, 173.

Henry Martin uses these terms in reference to practical approaches to jazz theory designed to improve
performance and/or composition (including improvisation and arranging) of the lay musician.
Pedagogical writings generally address basic questions like what notes, in addition to the ones of the
chord, are melodically compatible with that chord and are stylistically appropriate? By contrast,
speculative jazz theory presents the student with a system or method so that, ideally, they could
eventually determine on their own what notes to play. See Henry Martin, Jazz Theory: An Overview,
Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8 (1996): 78.
60
More discussion in the jazz pedagogy texts is given to major-key harmony with the good reason that
the majority of tunes in the tonal jazz repertoire are in major keys. Some texts also treat minor-key
harmony as transformed from the process of modal mixture.
61
Lawn and Hellmer, Jazz Theory and Practice, 89.
59
Jazz Perspectives
85
they support this claim by referring to tensions (9ths, 11ths, and 13ths)62 as: the
upper structure extensions of seventh chords. They are called tensions because they
create intervallic dissonance.63 If the seventh chord is the true consonance in jazz, then
it would have a status comparable to the role(s) of the triad in common-practice theory.
The reliance on the 7th chord, as seen in Lawn and Hellmer, is generally not the
only harmonic option for tonic chords cited in these books. The following passages
are useful in recognizing other options for the tonic, as well as their status as
compared with the 7th chord:
Another sonority that functions as a tonic chord is the 6/9 chord. This chords
structure often does not contain a 7th. Although the chord is fundamentally of
major quality, its identity and function are somewhat obscured due to the absence
of a major or minor 7th. Identity is established through function, and, in most
cases, the 6/9 chord functions as a variation of the tonic.64
In most cases, major seventh chords are interchangeable with major sixth chords.65
Chords shown on lead sheets as major 7th chords dont necessarily have to have
a major 7th. Quite often a pianist or guitarist will voice whats shown as CD on the
music as C6, C9/6, or C #4.66
In each of these passages, Lawn and Hellmer accept the added 6th as a chordal
substitute for the major 7th but they still prefer the latter chord, mostly irrespective of
melodic content. Both chords are accepted in these sources as relatively stable entities
that can function as tonic.
A few, admittedly older books reverse their preference for the ideal harmonic
consonance in favor of the added 6th.67 For example, Stanton writes: In jazz, the
sixth will be added to the tonic chord to create a modern Major sound68 (underlined
62
Strunk defines a tension as a pitch related to a structurally superior pitch (usually a chord tone) by
step, such that the tension represents and substitutes for the structurally superior pitch, called its
resolution, in the register in which it occurs. See Steven Strunk, Bebop Melodic Lines: Tonal
Characteristics, Annual Review of Jazz Studies 3 (1985): 9798. However, this definition is far from
universally accepted. Jaffe, for example, refers to tensions and extensions as synonyms, where extensions
are simply successive thirds stacked over a triad, without judgment as to their structural function. See
Jaffe, Jazz Theory, 49. Although there is general agreement about ninths and higher, there is some
dispute regarding whether scale degrees 6 and 7 are tensions, largely due to ones definition of the
tension, not aesthetic judgment.
63
Pease and Pullig, Modern Jazz Voicings, 11.
64
Lawn and Hellmer, Jazz Theory and Practice, 89-90. 9/6 chords are often referred to as 6/9 chords in
jazz theory. But to maintain a logical system of nomenclature in this study, all higher numbers are placed
first and/or above other Arabic numbers (6/9 is the only common signature that does not already
conform to this convention).
65
Lawn and Hellmer, Jazz Theory and Practice, 13.
66
Levine, Jazz Theory Book, 289. The indication #4 is generally less common than #11, used to
describe the same phenomenon.
67
Delamont, Modern Harmonic Techniques, vol. 1, 52 and 62, addresses the subject of harmonic functions
with strict adherence to traditional (triadic) theory, although he recognizes added 6ths and 7ths, and
prefers the 6th for jazz usage. He also includes a few examples that present added-sixth chords.
68
Stanton, Jazz Theory, 21.
86
Example 2 George Russells relative Major Chord Family for Lydian Mode I.
emphasis in the original). He continues, sixth chords will be applied only when the
use of a Tonic [I] chord is needed.69 (He employs sixth chords in minor in the same
way.) Stanton allows sevenths and other extended harmonies to be used (In
performance, when the jazz player reads the chord symbol for a Major Sixth chord, it
is traditionally understood that the Major 7th and 9th may be added70), but calls
7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths (so called when a sixth appears in a 7th chord) unresolved
tensions. Unlike the previous books cited, Stantons book identifies these tensions as
color tones that want to resolve.71
Some sources demonstrate by example that relatively stable harmony can be found as
anything from simple triads to 11th chords, as seen in Pease and Pullig.72 Daniel
Ricigliano explains why different sonorities are available to serve as tonic harmony:
a) The major sixth or seventh is added to the major triad when more color is desired. . . .
The major sixth chord is a somewhat more relaxed sound while the major seventh chord
creates more tension. b) The melody often may determine which tone is chosen.73
While he whets our appetite with insights, he leaves some significant questions
unanswered. Are these sonorities truly equivalent if one color is more tense than
another, despite being of the same function? Why are sonority choices limited to the
three illustrated in Example 1 and not others? Certainly germane to his discussion of the
former question is the issue of voicing and voice leading, which Ricigliano does not
address satisfactorily.74 Most importantly, like so many other authors of method books,
he does not provide any rationale for membership in the set of stable sonorities.
George Russell not only provides additional sonority possibilities for tonic, as
illustrated in Example 2, but also provides ample, if questionable, justification for
their acceptance.75 He allows six members of the tonic or Lydian Mode I chord
family: the major triad, added 6th, major 7th, major 9/7, and major #11/9/7 (he
also puts forward a Major 7/b5 which is just a subset of the previous complex
69
Ibid., 22.
Ibid., 62.
71
Ibid., 61.
72
Pease and Pullig, Modern Jazz Voicings, 1213.
73
Emphasis added. Ricigliano, Popular and Jazz Harmony, 125.
74
The topics of voicing and voice leading will be discussed with regard to the present definition of
consonance in articles currently in preparation. See also McGowan, Dynamic Consonance,
especially chapters 3 and 4.
75
See Darius Brubeck, 1959: The Beginning of Beyond, in The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, eds.
Mervyn Cooke and David Horn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1913; and two
articles by Mark Haywood, The Harmonic Role of Melody in Vertical and Horizontal Jazz, Annual
Review of Jazz Studies 5 (1991): 10920, and Exploring the Ramifications of George Russells Lydian
Chromatic Concept, unpublished manuscript.
70
Jazz Perspectives
87
chord).76 He states: The major scale resolves to its tonic major chord. The Lydian scale
is the sound of its tonic major chord.77 Russell argues for the inclusion of #11, since
his model scale is the Lydian mode, not the major mode. Limitations for inclusion in
the collection of possible chords are due to factors of style and voicing.78
The #11 chord, and to a lesser degree chords with added 9ths, are typically
referred to as those adding color. For example, Ligon suggests that extending the
Cmaj7 chord to the #11 brightens the sound beyond a normal resolution to
major.79 In some cases, the terms tension and dissonance also enter the
characterization, such as Reevess comment that each additional chord tone adds
color and tension to the harmony,80 and Riciglianos statement that the tones
presented in this chapter (especially 9ths and 11ths) may be added whenever the
reader desires more color, tension, or a thicker texture than is provided by the use of
triads, sixth, or seventh chords.81 Through musical example and indirect comments,
#11 is supported by some as being at least possible as a choice for a stable tonic if not
truly a consonance. Levine writes: You can change a major chord (as in CD) to a
Lydian chord (CD#4) virtually any time. . . . Playing the #4 on a major chord is like
adding ice cream; its a cool sound.82 Note that in minor, chords with the natural
11th are also permitted because the potent minor-9th clash with the natural 3rd
found in major keys does not occur.
The final possibility for a tonic harmony that is cited in some sources is that of the major
triad with minor 7th (major-minor 7th). In fact, in jazz notation all 7th chords are assumed
to have the minor seventh unless indicated otherwise. While most texts rightly observe that
such harmonies generally function as dominants, they can also serve as tonics within a
prevailing blues sonic environment. Burbat writes: It is interesting that [in blues] not only
the dominant is played with minor 7th (as usual), but also the tonic and subdominant.83
In discussing the development of blues progressions, Lawn and Hellmer note:
It was not long before the somewhat limiting V7-IV7-I7 cadence in the final four
measures [of a traditional blues progression] was replaced by the basic building
block of jazz and popular harmony, the ii7-V7-I progression. The tonic quality
remained a dominant 7th as was the case in the first measure of the progression.84
76
Emphasis in original. Burbat, in his Table 1, also enumerates possible chord choices for tonic,
including the same options as well as other combinations. See Burbat, Harmonik des Jazz, 8.
77
George Russell, The Lydian-Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation (New York:
Concept Publishing Corp, 1959; reprint 1964), iv.
78
These factors of style and voicing are addressed in numerous sources in jazz theory pedagogy. Two
classic sources for jazz piano include John Mehegan, Jazz Improvisation, vols. 14 (New York: WatsonGuptill Publications, 195965); and Bill Dobbins, The Contemporary Jazz Pianist, vols. 14 (Jamestown,
RI: GAMT Music Press, 1978).
79
Ligon, Jazz Theory Resources, 379.
80
Scott D. Reeves, Creative Beginnings (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 295.
81
Ricigliano, Popular and Jazz Harmony, 149.
82
Levine, Jazz Theory Book, 289.
83
Burbat, Harmonik des Jazz, 15.
84
Lawn and Hellmer, Jazz Theory and Practice, 170. This is echoed by Mark Levine who adds an
historical generalization that other harmonic qualities are possible (as tonic) in the blues from the bebop
period on. Levine, Jazz Theory Book, 220.
88
Some writers acknowledge (while others only imply) that a prevailing blues idiom
will allow a tonic to be played with a minor 7th and still be conclusive.85 A few often
earlier sources, however, determinedly adhere to a view that such blues tonics are not
stable or consonant, nor do these harmonies provide effective endings. For example,
Avril Dankworth writes: Instead of finishing on the tonic chord, the added blue note
gives the inconclusive effect of ending on a chord of the seventh.86 Comments like
this from the 1960s demonstrate an unwillingness to recognize blues dialects as
participating as consonant tonics within a tonal jazz language.
Examples 3A and B, presented by Burbat as his Examples 5-1B and 5-13,
demonstrate that a tonic sonority in the blues may be either a major-minor 7th or the
more conventional jazz harmony of the added 6th or major 7th. Example 3A
specifically features major-minor 7th chords that function as stable tonic harmonies.
Example 3B rightly interprets most major-minor 7th chords as dominants or as
applied dominants in a prevailing context of added 6/9 chords (aside from the F7 IV
chords). The examples also demonstrate the idiomatic use of extensions of a 9th and
higher, and feature Riemannian function-theory labels (T5Tonic; S5Subdominant;
D5Dominant; Sp5Subdominant-parallel; and [D]5secondary Dominant).
Other possibilities for tonic are discussed in some books. One often cited possibility
features a #5 in the chord, usually with the major 7th. In such examples, however, it is
clear that this tonic variant is not used as a stable harmonic arrival, but subsequently leads
either to a subdominant chord or stable tonic by resolving the #5 to another chord tone.
Referring to the latter situation, Levine writes: Jazz musicians often resolve Lydian
augmented chords (that is, major #5 chords) to the unaltered major 7th chord by
lowering the #5 back to a natural 5th . . . [or raising it] upward to the 6th, as shown in
Example 4.87 Perhaps because of its ambiguous symmetrical structure, a chord with an
augmented triad is not used as a stable arrival harmony in tonal jazz (this also holds true
for fully diminished seventh chords).88 Inversionally symmetric structures can
85
Addressing the evolution of consonance in classical music, Chailley writes: Finally, we may note a
recent phenomenon, widely put to use in jazz around 1920, by virtue of which the [interval of a] minor
7th, with certain precautions (notably its remoteness from the final chord), comes to lose its sense of
dominant 7th and is integrated into the tonic chord without leading it toward a modulation to the
subdominant. Chailley, Historical Treatise, 46.
86
Avril Dankworth, Jazz: An Introduction to its Musical Basis (London: Oxford University Press, 1968),
31. This belief is also expressed in Ricigliano via musical examples in his book published one year earlier.
87
Levine, Jazz Theory Book, 291.
88
This paper assumes that there is a scale-degree limitation on #5 and that it does not appear in a
consonance. The #5 (and its enharmonic equivalent b6) will not likely appear as a chord tone when the
#5th is present in the chord; the root, 3rd, and 5th are inherently stable chord tones in tonal music and
thus appear (or are implied) in all consonant harmonies. Some influential jazz pedagogues are emphatic
that the resultant minor 9th is prohibited as too harsh an interval in most jazz. See Coker, Improvising
Jazz (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964; Touchstone, 1986), 24. This belief is echoed in more
recent sources, including Levine, Jazz Theory Book. Also relevant when consonances are added-sixth
chords, the effect of #5 in the chord (assuming the real or imagined presence of #5) would create two
simultaneous consecutive semitones. For discussions of this constraint, see James Kurzdofer,
Outrageous Clusters: Dissonant Semitonal Cells in the Music of Thelonious Monk, Annual Review
of Jazz Studies 8 (1996): 184185; and Dmitri Tymoczko, The ConsecutiveSemitone Constraint on
Scalar Structure: A Link between Impressionism and Jazz, Integral 11 (1997): 135179.
Jazz Perspectives
89
Example 3A Wolf Burbats Example 5-1B, using major-minor (Mm) 7ths.

Example 3B Wolf Burbats Example 5-13, where major-minor 7ths are dominant functioned.
conceivably be interpreted as relatively stable in more recent, less tonally conceived

examples of jazz harmony. With this in mind, one could speculate that hearing #5 as
contextually stable acknowledges the evolutionary limit to tonal jazz. Extended tonality
ceases to be controlled by functional harmony when the perfect fifth of the triadic core in
any stable chord is altered.
Jazz-pedagogical sources typically associate stability with tonic function, although
each source presents its own possibilities for allowable chord choices, undoubtedly
because of changing styles over the years.89 That harmonic stability and consonance
are interconnected becomes very clear in the writings of two very influential jazz
theorists, Andrew Jaffe and David Liebman. Jaffe states: Two terms [consonance and
dissonance] are used to refer to the extremes of harmonic stability and instability
89
In this paper, it is assumed that consonant harmony is usually tonic, though not necessarily vice versa.
90
Example 4 Mark Levines example of Lydian augmented chords as tonic.
within an individual chord or a chord progression.90 Liebman agrees: Contextually,

cadence means the use of a relative consonance, called a tonal anchor, to offset the
more dissonant chromaticism [of the dominant].91 Harmonic interest is often
drawn to complex harmonies (typically extended dominants), which ultimately need
to resolve to a harmonically stable tonal center. What is not clear, however, is what
harmonic entity can constitute a suitably stable harmony, or relative consonance,
in a given musical context. Many sources cite more than one harmonic possibility for
tonic, but generally provide little explanation as to why or how one is selected. For
example, Ricigliano states that these [tonic] chords may be extended with additional
color tones without destroying the function of the original chord.92 This remark
suggests that different possibilities for consonant sonorities exist but no contextual
framework is offered to explain.
This articles emphasis on tonic harmony in the discussion of consonance is
consistent with existing jazz pedagogy for the most part. Still, a functional context of
harmony is rarely prominently featured in discussions of consonance and dissonance
or comparable semantic pairings, such as stability and instability.93 The word
consonance in many jazz-pedagogical publications generally implies the harmonic
presentation of a collectional bias towards Ionian mode (with an avoid tone), or
Lydian mode in the case of Russell and his followers. Chord/scale theory, now
commonly included in pedagogical texts, dictates that different modal collections are
used for different harmonic contexts, for example, Dorian mode for ii chords.94 This
approach is less effective for musical situations where chords other than majorsevenths are used on tonic, such as a blues major-minor 7th, because tonic is
normally associated with Ionian or Lydian modes, not the Mixolydian mode. It also
does not provide a distinction for functional differences between I7 and IV7, which
typically share the same collection (when both use the Lydian mode). Chord/scale
90
Emphasis added. Jaffe, Jazz Theory, 14.

David Liebman, A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody (Rottenburg, Germany: Advance
Music, 1991), 13.
92
93
This topic will be addressed by this author in an article currently in preparation, with a working title of
Hierarchic Harmonic Function in Tonal Jazz.
94
Gonda sums up the value of chord/scale theory by expressing that it is not really the single chords
which are important, but the functional movement embodied in the progression. Janos Gonda,
Problems of Tonality and Function in Modern Jazz Improvisation, Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 3/4
(19711972): 204.
91
Jazz Perspectives
91
theory is helpful, however, in providing a framework for distinguishing between

playing inside and playing outside, the latter creating an additional level of
dissonance. Beyond this, chord/scale theory has little impact upon consonance in its
syntactic sense, where a tonic arrival of any chord creates a sense of stability and
repose when presented in a cadence.
With the possible exception of dominant-functioned sonorities (because of their
inherent need for tonal resolution), any chord can create a brief moment of
consonance at a surface level of structure. This is achievable by sonorous analogy to
stable chords (i.e., similar chord structures to tonic chords), by local tonicizations
(e.g., secondary dominants of ii instead of a vi chord), or both. Chords other than
tonic can be experienced as relatively consonant, particularly subdominant chords.95
(It is also important to note that many tonic chords do not, in fact, function
syntactically as consonances.) Additionally, consonant chords can have a variety of
voicingsin seconds (clusters), thirds (common tertian), fourths (quartal), or
combinations of theseor chromatic variants such as #4 and b7, as in the acoustic
collection (e.g., C-D-E-F#-G-A-Bb).96 Despite such an array of choices, an audience
will be able to perceive moments of consonance with a wide range of chords, if and
when the performer projects syntactic resolution. This point is suggested, but not
made explicit, in most pedagogical texts.
What is especially ambiguous in these pedagogical books, and in jazz theory as a
whole, are the specific roles played by chordal extensions. Gary Campbell asks his
students to explore combining root-position major triads with triadic extensions to
encounter varying degrees of consonance and dissonance.97 In another example,
Trent Kynaston and Robert Ricci comment: A plain C7 chord has the same
directional potential as a C7 (#11/9), although the latter contains more tones of
activity and tonal embellishment.98 Situations abound in which some extensions, as
tensions, need to resolve; others are relatively stable but are functionally extraneous
color tones; and still others are stable and seem to function as members of the
underlying chords. How does one distinguish among these situations? Are there
95
In my dissertation, I argue that the functional mixture of tonic and subdominant harmony in some
closing chord towers can also serve as consonant sonorities, albeit complex ones and only in certain
contexts. McGowan, Dynamic Consonance, 198207.
96
The acoustic collection is obviously rooted in the overtone or harmonic series. Stable yet complex jazz
chords often evoke the overtone series in both pitch collection and voicing (wide intervals in the lower
register, smaller intervals in the upper). However, I do not believe that a strict observance of the overtone
series is particularly beneficial to jazz theory and analysis due to the impact of blue notes and the
variable tuning of 3rds and 7ths in non-piano based harmony. Continuing this line of thought, the minor
triad should be considered just as viable as the major triad when used as stable sonorities in practice,
despite the fact that the intervals of the chord do not appear in the simple tuning ratios. Interestingly,
however, the major triad serves as the triadic core of extended chords far more frequently than minor
triads, largely due to its richer resonance. The relevance of the overtone series to chord membership and
voicing (including quartal voicings) is addressed in McGowan, Dynamic Consonance, chapter 3, 76
132.
97
Gary Campbell, Connecting Jazz Theory (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 1998), 77.
98
Emphasis added. Trent P. Kynaston and Robert J. Ricci, Jazz Improvisation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1978), 143.
92
discrete distinctions among these extensions? What role do they play in tonal
structure? Steven Strunk writes:
One view of such dissonant notes is that they are elements of color and
therefore have to do with timbre rather than functional harmony; another is that
the level of dissonance in jazz has simply risen to the point at which (as many texts
on arrangement state) no chord should have fewer than four different notes.99
Although this area of inquiry is a perplexing issue in harmonic theory of jazz, it

tends to get overlooked, and this problem has not been considered in any systematic
way.100
Jazz theory books of a pedagogical nature disseminate jazz theory to a far greater
audience than academic publications do. These books represent the culmination of
the authors experiences and are written by leaders in jazz pedagogy, individuals who
teach at colleges and universities, direct ensembles, release recordings of their music,
and influence countless young musicians. But a fundamental problem in these books
is that the theoretical basis for the content that they include is lacking. They provide
pages of generalizations, guidelines, and de-contextualized musical examples in
unsystematic and piecemeal manners that do not address the big picture of tonal
structure.101 Admittedly, the latter is not what they set out to do, nor would their
intended audience likely appreciate such work though theoretical clarity and
sophistication can have salutary pedagogical effects, as the history of classical theory
demonstrates. Nonetheless, the authors occasional intuitive asides and fascinating
musings of how do transcend the tedious inventories of modal patterns and sample
voicings demonstrating the mere what. Their insights offer an invitation to closer
study and provide valuable information that can be incorporated into the design of a
more unified and effective theory. Such a theoryif conceptually grounded in a rich
tonal tradition and adapted for the distinctiveness of jazzis desperately needed for
harmonic analysis to be relevant and truly efficacious for jazz.
Schenkerian Discourse about Consonance in Jazz Theory
Theorists have answered this invitation and attempted to address tonality in jazz via
Schenkerian theory. Steve Larson, a leader in this pursuit, recognizes that chords
greater than a triad are syntactic in jazz, but he states: While Schenkerian analysis can
explain a great deal about modern jazz, some features of modern jazz performances may
remain difficult to explain. Such anomalies include . . . dissonances added to final tonic
99
Steven Strunk, Harmony, in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, vol. 1, ed. Barry Kernfeld (London:
Macmillan, 1988), 161.
100
Recent work by Martin makes early advances in this area: Henry Martin, Early Dissonance Into Jazz
Consonance: The Added Sixth Chord, paper delivered at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the
Society for Music Theory, 2003.
101
The current situation with these sources is comparable to seventeenth-century and earlier
thoroughbass manuals and counterpoint treatises. As these texts were disparate collections of rules,
no governing systematics were abstracted nor generalized models offered to unite the rules into a more
manageable form, at least until the work of Rameau.
Jazz Perspectives
93
sonorities.102 This so-called anomaly is extremely significant to understanding tonality

in tonal jazz. Larson notes that dissonances may receive greater emphasis and may be
treated more freely in modern jazz than in classical music, [but] their basic meaning
remains the same: a dissonance derives its meaning from more stable pitches at deeper
structural levels.103 While Larson is using dissonance here as an ahistorical, fixed
value, in the Schenkerian sense, the use of non-triadic tones in stable arrival chords does
not depend upon the triadic tones. The basic meaning is not the same in classical and
in jazz. The added 6th, for example, sounds in addition to the 5th, and it functions
independently of the 5th in voice leading. While dissonances in non-concluding
harmonies are exceedingly pervasive as tensions, they also commonly appear as
structural chord members at cadential arrival points. When a section or piece is over,
and the voice-leading and harmonic progression of the performance ends on a sonority
with four or more different notes, harmonic extensions need not be explained away as
mere tensions.104
Recent work by some theorists has accepted the triad plus added major 6th as
stable. Strunk writes: In jazz harmony, the 7th of a major-7th chord can obtain a
sense of resolution by moving to the added 6th of the same chord.105 But while he
readily accepts scale degree 6 above tonic as a consonant interval, in an earlier article,
he is reluctant to call either the resultant chord consonant or to identify the 6th of
the chord as a chord tone:
^
6/I is not dissonant with the root; nor does it form a seventh interval with a lower
basic chord tone; yet it is not a triad member. It can behave as a tension standing
^
for, and resolving to 5/I. . . . But its consonant106 character enables it to serve as the
^
resolution of 7/I, the major seventh tension, and this is its most unusual role: an
^
unresolved addition to I, not standing for 5 (which is often voiced a step away from
107
it), but also not a chord tone.
These comments by Strunk and Larson, above, imply a theoretical preference for
pure triads as consonant chords, consistent with Schenkerian theory. Their writing,
however, seems apologetic at best, and even defensive about the inconsistency of
juxtaposing the triads in their methodology with the complex harmonies that actually
resolve dissonances in modern jazz. Larson acknowledges that his promotion of
Schenkerian analysis is in relation to the output of Bill Evans, who himself probably
102
Steve Larson, Schenkerian Analysis of Modern Jazz: Questions about Method, Music Theory
Spectrum 20 (1998): 217.
103
Ibid., 213.
104
In a Schenkerian analysis of a performance by Bill Evans, Larson demonstrates that a tonic 9/6 chord
can be reduced to a major triad at a deep middleground level. In contrast, Evans himself explains in an
interview with Marian McPartland that the same performance has a simpler basic structure (Evanss
term), but retains the chordal identity of the 9/6 chord. See Ibid., 20941, and, in particular, 222, 227,
and 235.
105
Steven Strunk, Linear Intervallic Patterns in Jazz Repertory, Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8
(1996), 105; see also Martin, Early Dissonance Into Jazz Consonance.
106
Consonant here refers to the intervallic quality that the major 6th possesses. This presents another
prime example of the conflation, and confusion, between intervallic consonance and chord membership.
107
Strunk, Bebop Melodic Lines, 99.
94
studied Schenkerian analysis, and therefore may be biased.108 He nonetheless stands by

his statements arguing that it seems unlikely that Evanss thought processes were totally
unlike those of other jazz artists.109 While recognizing differences between commonpractice classical music and tonal jazz, Larson (and to a lesser degree, Strunk)
determinedly adhere(s) to a strict Schenkerian orthodoxy in defining consonances.110
Larson has acknowledged the presence of extensions as chord tones on foreground
levels, but at middleground levels he has clearly expressed that they be reduced to triads.
Some Schenkerian scholars who study jazz agree that, as a rule, extensions are not
consonant or chord tones, but accept that sonorities greater than a triad can provide
resolution of preceding dissonant structures and do not need to be resolved. Steven
Gilbert writes, for example, that in Gershwins harmonic language the dissonance
had at least been partiallyto use Schoenbergs wordemancipated. The triad was
still necessary for closure, but dissonances such as ninths and so-called thirteenths111
did not require resolution.112 In his dissertation on the music of Charlie Parker,
Thomas Owens adopts Salzers adaptation of Schenkerian analysis. In Salzers
approach, contrapuntal-structural harmonies greater than triads can provide the
same role as triads. Although Owens focuses on motivic structure in the melody, he
presents a harmonic context for some sketches that also includes a stable added-sixth
chord. Interpreting one analytical sketch, he writes: The last note, G, is heard as an
inner voice of the [Bb] tonic chord, a major triad with an added sixth.113 He does
not include any other chord type as a prolonged and/or stable harmony.
More so than others mentioned above, Allen Forte acknowledges the special status
of the added-sixth chord. He liberally accepts the participation of the added sixth in
functional contexts of deep-level harmony and voice leading. In his Schenkerian108
Gregory Smith provides evidence that Evans likely studied Felix Salzers Structural Hearing at Mannes
College. Salzers approach is Schenkerian in orientation but does not retain many of the theorys original
strictures. Gregory Eugene Smith, Homer, Gregory, and Bill Evans?: The Theory of Formulaic
Composition in the Context of Jazz Piano Improvisation (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983), 345;
and Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing (New York: Dover, 1982).
109
Larson, Schenkerian Analysis of Modern Jazz, 239.
110
As Brown and Dempster observe, consonance is equated with chord tone in strict Schenkerian
theory and its identity is restricted to that of the members of a major or minor triad, a view consistent
with that of Larson. Brown later recants this view, limiting the term consonance strictly to the
classification of intervals, and preferring instead the term chord tone as the basis for Schenkerian
transformations. See Matthew Brown and Douglas Dempster, The Scientific Image of Music Theory,
Journal of Music Theory 33 (1989): 65106; and Matthew Brown, Rothsteins Paradox (also based on
personal conversation with the author in 2002).
111
Thirteenths are viewed as equivalent to sixths by some authors. In general, however, the following
convention described by Strunk is commonly accepted: The term sixth is used for a pitch that is able, in
the given context, to be the resolution of a diatonic seventh; the term thirteenth is used when the
associated seventh is not major. The thirteenth is not the resolution of a seventh. Strunk, Bebop
Melodic Lines, 100. Mark Levine adds: Standard practice is to use 6 on major and minor chords (C6,
C-6), and 13 on dominant chords (C13/7). See Levine, Jazz Theory Book, ix.
112
Steven Gilbert, Gershwins Art of Counterpoint, The Musical Quarterly 70 (1984): 423, as quoted
in Steven Larson, Review of Books by Allen Forte, Steven Gilbert, and Henry Martin, Music Theory
Spectrum 21 (1999): 114.
113
Thomas Owens, Charlie Parker: Techniques of Improvisation (Ph.D. diss., University of
California at Los Angeles, 1974), 221.
Jazz Perspectives
95
influenced analyses, Forte identifies 6 in a tonic triad-plus-added-sixth as the

climactic terminal note of the large-scale melodic configuration114 in Jerome Kerns
Lovely to Look At, and allows the added-sixth tonic chord to support the highly
^
unorthodox choice of a 6 primary tone in Hoagy Carmichaels Skylark.115 In a
primer for his idiosyncratic adaptation of Schenkerian graphic technique (designed
specifically for the repertoire of the American popular ballad), Forte accepts chord
tones other than the triad as potentially stable, stating:
According to the principle of harmonic-contrapuntal definition, a note in the main
melodic line (the melody) receives its strongest support from a consonant chord
or, in the case of our vernacular repertoire, a consonant chord that is enhanced by
one of the stable dissonances, such as a ninth.116
His association of the term stable with dissonant is quite peculiar since the terms
are, in some Schenkerian senses, polar opposites. He recognizes that some
dissonances can serve as structurally essential elements, although in this instance
he chooses not to redefine the label consonance to be anything but the tried-andtrue triad. This definitional tension clearly demonstrates the need to rescue the
terminology and conceptions of consonance and related terms when dealing with not
only American popular song, but also tonal jazz.
The above theorists have each adapted some form of Schenkerian theory for the
purposes of explicating tonal processes and form in tonal jazz pieces and/or the early
popular songs that were vehicles for jazz improvisation. These writings bring to light
fascinating features of tonality inherent in the music. But in orienting their analytical
perspectives in Schenkerian theory (a theory originally designed for a very different
repertoire than tonal jazz), the authors struggle to retain the sacrosanct belief of the
triad as consonance. In so doing, they diminish the role that harmonic extensions
play in the fundamental relationship of dissonance to consonance. While Schenkerian
theory may offer a structural model that captures complex voice-leading and an
underlying harmonic plan, it does not convey the sense of relative stability and
instability of extended chordal towers that is fundamental to appreciating jazz
musicians experience of tonality.
Beyond these concerns, differences in aesthetics and formal design between jazz
and classical styles raise significant doubts about the validity of the Schenkerian
approach to jazz. For example, composer Graham Collier writes: In jazz the object
itself is constantly changing: each performance offers up, at the least, new variations
on the given material and, at the most, a completely new structure.117 Collier
describes limitations to formal structure in jazz as a result of factors that include a
repetitive pulse, restricting chord patterns, dependence on themes, and a lack of
114
Allen Forte, The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 19241950 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 51.
115
Ibid., 4851.
116
Emphasis added. Ibid., 43.
117
Graham Collier, Jazz: A Students and Teachers Guide (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975),
x.
96
development. But he adds, one must not fall into the habit of comparison with
straight music118 because instead of building musical ideas upon pre-determined
forms like the sonata, jazzmen tend to think of form as a verbto construct their
music as they go along.119 Alex Lubet argues that tonal jazz deviates from commonpractice music due to reasons of formal simplicity yet sonorous complexity
(particularly for tonics), and therefore the analysis of jazz using Schenkerian theory is
incongruous.120 However, discrediting hierarchical tonal analysis because acoustic
phenomena are more salient than tonal structure in jazz is misguided for it denies an
historic and tangible relationship with common-practice tonality. Still, the successful
application of Schenkerian theory to jazz analysis will require judicious modification
of the theory before it can be integrated into an analytical methodology specific to
tonal jazz.
Henry Martin has made headway towards achieving an appropriate balance
between respecting the harmonic language of tonal jazz and employing powerful
analytical-reductive tools. He presents a novel hierarchic approach to understanding
form in tonal jazz by asserting a principle of tonality-by-arrival.121 In Martins
approach, he also pushes the envelope of traditional harmonic theory when he
acknowledges the functional role of the major 7th and major-minor 7th chords in
tonal structure as well as the 6th.122 Based on his analytical findings, he writes:
When sixth and seventh chords are found referring to stable tonic sonorities, they
often require no further resolution of dissonance at any structural level. He also
indicates that the background syntax for mainstream jazz tonality [includes] the
principal harmonic reference structures [of] seventh chords and their extensions.123
While he considers the role of sonorities greater than a triad to be syntactic in tonal
jazz, he stops short of referring to them as consonances. To reiterate a critical point, a
major part of the problem stems from using the terms consonance and
dissonance without a universally accepted meaning.
Revisiting Fortes book, there is one brief but atypical discussion of consonance
that has profound implications for harmonic theory in jazz. Example 5 reproduces
118
Straight music is Colliers term for non-improvised classical music. Collier, Jazz, xi.
Don Heckman, cited in Collier, Jazz, x (from an article in Down Beat, 1964).
120
Lubet further claims that tonal jazz is neither an example nor a dialect of common practice
tonality. He rejects the use of Schenkerian theory and comparable hierarchical approaches to analyzing
tonal structure in jazz because they do not integrate timbral, articulative, and intonational elements.
Lubet, Body and Soul, 171. Lubets dismissal of Schenkerian theory is not nearly as abusively polemic
as Schenkers deriding statements about jazz (as well as other musical styles, ideologies, and cultures):
German musicians have exchanged their wealth of genius for jazz and other exotic types with
unequalled shamefulness and undignified readiness. Instead of feeling far more duty bound to guard the
genius level of the musical art for the sake of mankind, they have sunk even below the level of primitive
peoples. Heinrich Schenker, Rameau oder Beethoven?, in Sylvia Kalib, ed., Thirteen Essays from the
Three Yearbooks Das Meisterwerk in der Musik by Heinrich Schenker: An Annotated Translation, vol. 2,
trans. Sylvia Kalib (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1973), 508.
121
Martin, Jazz Harmony: A Syntactic Background.
122
For a discussion of the role of the major-minor 7th in blues tonality, see Martin, Jazz Harmony: A
Syntactic Background, 256.
123
Ibid., 10.
119
Jazz Perspectives
97
Example 5 Allen Fortes analysis of Duke Ellingtons Prelude to a Kiss (1938).
Fortes Example 17, an analytical representation of the harmonic progression in Duke

Ellingtons Prelude to a Kiss. This example features an analytical system that
demonstrates extensive descending fifth motion (shown with beamed bass notes). In
his commentary to the example, Forte writes:
In this representation, the long chain divides into three shorter chains, each
subchain determined by the arrival on a consonant (or almost consonant)
harmony, first on IV7, then on II, and finally on I, which is immediately preceded
by V7. Thus only at the end of the chain does the progression reach the tonic. And
with the exception of the two consonant harmonies, IV7 and II, each chord is a form
of secondary dominant, so that the progression moves through a series of
dominant-type sonorities, each one (with the exception of the two consonances)
the dominant of its successor.124
His parenthetical qualifier almost consonant presumably refers to the use of the
IV7, a tonicized chord that terminates the first shorter chain or what he later refers
to as a two-bar group in his section on form.125 But when he apparently
contradicts the triadic understanding of consonance two sentences later by explicitly
identifying the IV7 as consonant, the reader is left to speculate what exactly Forte
means by the term. Two meanings are apparent: (1) a variable, relative sense where
consonant (or almost consonant) means consonant, but less so; and (2) a
syntactic sense where the presence of a dissonant dominant or applied dominant
points to a consonance in a Rameauian imitation of a cadence. Jazz musicians will
easily acknowledge that these are just temporary tonics, regardless of the fact that one
is a seventh chord and thus not a consonance in the Schenkerian sense. Whether
intentional or not, Forte thus presents a distinctly different understanding of
consonance than that used in orthodox Schenkerian theory.
Resolving Tension and Motion: Musical Meaning and Consonance
In the previous citation, Forte demonstrates a meaning of consonance as
pluralistic, incorporating both fixed and variable conceptions, as well as other
semantic dichotomies discussed at the beginning of this paper. As shown above in
sampling selected sources in jazz theory, consonance is used at times to assert one
124
125
Emphasis added. Forte, American Popular Ballad, 16.

Ibid., 367.
98
side of a dichotomy. The term can also be used, however, to mediate between the
extremes within a semantic continuum. It is in this latter spirit that the term is
employed by this author. The analysis of consonance, in this pluralistic sense,
is enhanced when considering the dynamics of tension and motion in music.
This remaining section explores the metaphoric implications of these dynamics,
as they imbue harmonic analysis with a greater depth of meaning for active listeners,
performers, and analysts. Further, despite the terminological overuse of consonance, this study not only defends, but it promotes the application of the term for
analytical purposes.
At a general level, as Cazden notes, the term consonance in common parlance
refers less to immediate auditory beauty than to a sense of agreement, akin to a
judgment of being well-adjusted, of being in accord.126 Given the practical purposes
of books on jazz theory, it is understandable that many approach the subject at this
general level. Also, many seem unconcerned, or possibly even unaware, that they
might have used more than one meaning of consonance or dissonance without
explicit definition. What seems to be of paramount concern in jazz theory is the
simple perception of consonance and dissonance (in its variety of meanings),
apparent in the ebb and flow of tension in motion.
While jazz theory applies the categories of tension and relaxation to chord formations,
they also apply to chord progressions. Bruce Benward and Joan Wildman write:
The tonic is the only chord of a key strong enough to pull all other diatonic chords
into a subservient harmonic relationship; even the dominant with its high degree of
tension also carries with it the expectation of a succeeding tonic. Since all music moves
either toward tension or away from it, chord progressions are directed toward either
the tonic or the dominant. Thus, the strongest tension/relaxation progression is V7/I;
ultimately, all other progressions serve only these two chords.127
Jerry Coker adds metaphorically:

The tonic chords are like magnets, tugging at the other types of chords, giving the
dominants and minor sevenths tension that must be resolved. The tonic is the only
chord which offers complete rest.128
The tension/relaxation metaphor found in jazz theory sources is used frequently

for both horizontal and vertical pitch formations, but is not limited, of course, to
jazz. It exists in the theoretical literature of all tonal music (in its broadest sense) in
many different pairings: expectation/resolution, active/stable, implication/realization,
stressed/unstressed, and so forth.129
126

Emphasis in original. Bruce Benward and Joan Wildman, Jazz Improvisation in Theory and Practice
(Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1984), 30.
128
Jerry Coker, Improvising Jazz, 71.
129
While this literature is vast, it all relates broadly to the field of energetics and deals with the primacy
of motion and tonal flux in music. A relevant overview of the historical precedents of these ideas, in the
work of Kurth and others, is found in Lee Rothfarb, Energetics, in The Cambridge History of Western
Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 927.
127
Jazz Perspectives
99
Although there has been little agreement over what music means,130 the
metaphor of music in terms of tension and motion is widely acknowledged. In the
eighteenth century, Daniel Webb characterized motion as the inner movement of
the nerves or spirits which music imitates.131 This belief permeated subsequent
thought as well, such that almost 200 years later, Donald Ferguson relates musical
tension and motion in a similar manner where music imitates the human nervous
system under the stress of emotion.132 Relating melody and harmony to this
metaphor, he further invests in the metaphor when he states: Rest and activity are
evident also, in a still more complex and suggestive aspect, in the harmonic relations
of consonance and dissonance.133 Obviously, philosophical speculation cannot
definitively declare what music means; but the terms we adopt and the metaphors we
invoke should benefit our meta-linguistic ability to communicate about the structure,
expression, and personal meaning of the musical language in question.
This specific conception of consonance employed here for tonal jazz is
intentionally heterogeneous, yet its manifold components are not new. The inclusion
of metaphoric tension and motion within the realm of consonance and dissonance is
ideally suited to analytical study of tonal jazz harmony. It allows the analyst to
address the syntactic and phonological dimensions of consonance in a more creative
way, permitting sonorous and chord-membership variability in vertical structures. In
this way, one can utilize consonance, with all its rich semantic connections, to refer
to stable harmonic moments that feature a relatively large set of possible chords.
Further, consonance is also able to contribute to analytical discourse regarding the
evasion or masking of syntactic realizations of consonance, as well as the sense of
balance between unstable and stable harmonies. These aspects of tonal-jazz
performance are rich with metaphoric associations, and are essential to its nature.
Saxophonist and educator Dave Liebman, addressing some of these larger concerns
of consonance, comments on how different musical situations will determine the
appropriate degree of tension and release:
In Western music, the principle of tension and release has been realized
harmonically in the dominant-tonic axis. In between these two extremes lies the
subdominant function. This means that a musical gesture (harmonic, melodic or
rhythmic) is active and leading towards some goal (dominant); is between a feeling
130
The analogy of music with language is an influential musical metaphor. The differences of opinion
over the meaning of music have had an almost equally long history as the meaning of consonance. For
detailed critical summaries of the history of musical meaning, see Stephen Davies, Musical Meaning and
Expression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); and Raymond Monelle, Linguistics and Semiotics in
Music (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992), especially chapter 1.
131
Daniel Webb (1769), as cited in Monelle, Linguistics and Semiotics, 4.
132
Donald N. Ferguson, Music as Metaphor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973; orig. pub.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1960), 185.
133
Ferguson writes: Consonance (or concordthe musician uses these words as synonyms) implies
tonal, but not necessarily syntactic, rest. Ferguson, Music as Metaphor, 70. Although he refers to
consonance in a fixed, universal sense, he notes that the distinction between concord and discord has
thus been supplanted by a discrimination between softer and harsher tone-combinations (71). His
concession can be interpreted as further rationale for retooling this authors definition of consonance.
100 Consonance in Tonal Jazz
of activity and repose (subdominant); or is at a place of rest (tonic).

Chromaticism134 is no different than diatonicism in this respect. Within each
context, everything is relative. Once the consonance-dissonance level of a particular
musical area is established, these three basic functions (subdominant, dominant
and tonic) should still be discernible in relation to each other with the many
possible shadings in between.135
To fully appreciate Liebmans above statement, one must explore what is meant by
consonance-dissonance level. Also, further questions arise about what is relative,
and what are the possible shadings. Although creatively rich in implication,
Liebman unfortunately does not muse in much greater depth in this book about these
matters, returning instead to the pragmatic concerns of his (highly respected) playing
method. He therefore leaves theorists to pursue such conceptual matters in other
studies.
Other texts also suggest that different historical (and social) frames of reference
will contribute to what choices are available for consonances. Ligon claims: Music
history could be traced by the relative degrees of dissonance that [were] fashionable,
adding that as jazz developed, the levels of dissonance were expanded.136 This and
similar sources suggest that preferences for consonant sonorities change over time,
but once a harmonic type has fallen out of popular favor, it is nonetheless still
available to the performer. (Tenney makes a similar claim regarding the persistence
and coexistence of older conceptions of consonance.137) That different possibilities
for moments of consonance can exist simultaneously within one socio-historical
context has been widely, if only implicitly, accepted as a defining element of the
concept of consonance and dissonance as it pertains to tonal jazz. While most writers
on jazz harmony express their aesthetic bias for some chord choices, which are
preferred and/or more stable than others (both explicitly and implicitly via exclusion
of other harmonic types), they rarely disallow other possibilities. The differences in
jazz theory texts concerning options for consonance arise because different authors
capture the harmonic workings that conform to the particular style with which they
are most familiar.
If the tonality of tonal jazz behaved like classical music, we would already have
sufficient tools to unpack the problematic roles that dissonance and consonance play
in this repertoire. But since it does not, the study of their roles within jazz tonality as
a whole needs to be carefully addressed. Future research needs to systematically
explore the relationships between dissonant and consonant entities in terms of
134
Liebmans use of the term chromaticism is idiosyncratic. He recognizes three categories of
chromaticism ranging between a hierarchic meaning where it is conceived in relation to and is
subservient to diatonicism, to chromaticism that appears without reference to an overall tonal center
(and a nebulus tonal chromaticism lying somewhere in between the extremes). See Liebman, A Chromatic
Approach, 11.
135
Emphasis added. Ibid., 13. Liebmans comments suggest close conceptual relationships between jazz
theory and the theoretical writings of Rameau and Riemann. The plethora of varied resultant
relationships deserves a more thorough investigation in future studies.
136
Dissonance is used here in the sense of tension and color. Ligon, Jazz Theory Resources, 394.
137
See Tenney, History, 115.
Jazz Perspectives
101
voicings, voice leading, succession of sonorities, and musical rhetoric, particularly in

cadential gestures. Doing so will lay the groundwork for meaningful analytical study
of tonal jazz. Additional analytical inquiry could focus on determining what
harmonies specific jazz musicians, or those from a particular school, chose as
options for moments of consonance, and if such choices reflect a consistency of
harmonic dialect. Further, one could seek to reveal the functional role of extensions
to the stability and repose of consonant harmonies, to identify conflicts in dialect
choices in group interaction, and a variety of other analytical pursuits.
Tenney notes that each conception of consonance and dissonance, similar to the
scientific notion of paradigm, provided an effective conceptual framework for
musical practice . . . during some extended historical period.138 Inasmuch as this
paper has shown that the current paradigms do not serve analysis of the music well, a
new paradigm is warranted.139 A carefully constructed (or reconstructed) paradigm
of consonance and dissonance is called for that can model the dynamic use of
complex chords in stable contexts. Other terms and modifiers can certainly assist in
developing a clear and usable concept for tonal jazz, but they should not be used to
displace the words.
The uses of the terms consonance and dissonance are wide-ranging and
pervasive in jazz music theory and parlance (as well as in other musics).140 Because of
their venerable tradition in musical thought, one can use the terms to participate in
the interpretation and re-evaluation of the music itself in a way that no other
substituted words can. While there exists a wide range of meanings, they continue to
be used in earnest and are not going to go away.
Abstract
This paper considers the venerable history of efforts to define the terms
consonance and dissonance, and highlights their most relevant meanings for
the study of tonal jazz. While one can acknowledge a plurality of semantic diversity,
none of the existing definitions taken individually can fully account for how the
terms are used in most jazz parlance. Further, normative uses of the term
consonance in the discipline of music theory can neither account for the stable
harmonic sonorities that consist of chords with four or more members, nor account
for the variety of chord options that can each fulfill the role of a stable sonority in the
musical language of tonal jazz.
138
Ibid., 101.
According to Kuhn: The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new
tradition of normal science can emerge is . . . a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a
reconstruction that changes some of the fields most elementary theoretical generalizations as well as
many of its paradigm methods and applications. During the transition period there will be a large but
never complete overlap between the problems that can be solved by the old and by the new paradigm.
But there will also be a decisive difference in the modes of solution. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 845, as cited in Tenney, History,
102.
140
Admittedly, the term dissonance is used much more than consonance, as discussed above.
139
102 Consonance in Tonal Jazz
To resolve the terminological problems, this approach defines consonance and

dissonance as stable/passive and unstable/active harmonic entities within the musical
grammar of tonal jazz, as influenced by sonorous euphony. This understanding of the
terms thus embraces a pluralism of meaning that can account for the specific
challenges in jazz such as its improvisational context, stylistic variety, and others. This
plurality encompasses resolutions of conceptual dichotomies that have existed in
different meanings of the terms since their first uses in ancient Greek sources. The
article argues that because of the nature of the music, the definition of consonance
in particular must be conceived in a relative, harmonic sense.
In this approach, the article proffers three categoriesor dialectsof consonant
chords, based upon a sampling of jazz piano performances and pedagogical sources
in jazz theory. In tonal jazz, all consonant chords include a major or minor triad in
addition to one of three different possibilities of a fourth chord member: added sixth,
minor seventh, or major seventh. Beyond these harmonic dialects of four-note
chords, other possibilities exist for extensions of the ninth and (sharp) eleventh.
While these categories have been acknowledged by several pedagogical sources, this
literature provides little or no context of harmonic function nor a systematic
framework to model how the contextually stable chords behave. The idea that
consonance can include chords beyond a triad is contrasted with existing literature in
tonal theory, particularly extended Schenkerian theory that has been applied to jazz.
While some of this literature acknowledges the stable roles played by the three
primary dialect tones, almost all of them do not grant them equal status as the triadic
tones in consonant harmonies. The article concludes by supporting the conclusions
raised in the survey of jazz pedagogy and Schenkerian theory in a discussion of
metaphoric musical meaning of tension and release.

Consonance in Tonal Jazz

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Consonance in Tonal Jazz

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Consonance in Tonal Jazz

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the article discussing regarding the terms 'consonance' and 'dissonance'?

What is the article discussing regarding the terms 'consonance' and 'dissonance'?

How does the author propose defining 'consonance' and 'dissonance' in the context of tonal jazz?

How does the author propose defining 'consonance' and 'dissonance' in the context of tonal jazz?

This article was downloaded by: [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

On: 22 June 2014, At: 21:06