COMPARISON OF THE SELECTED HARMONY BOOKS BASED ON THEIR APPROACHES TO THE NOTION OF CONSONANCE

Abstract

Summarizing the history of the notion of consonance is almost equivalent to summarizing the history of western music, as a result of extensive literature and old history of the notion. Consonance, which is widely defined as “harmony of sounds” today, has been defined on the basis of mathematics, physics, psychology or interdisciplinary perspectives; but there presents no consensus between the theorists. On the other hand, in harmony books, the notion is either skipped or explained based on equal tempered harmonic intervals.
In this study, a comparative analysis will be carried out by considering how and in which words the - nearly 2000 years old - notion of consonance is explained in selected harmony books