reactions to previous Q on consonance of melodic intervals

[Piet Vos <vos@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Allow me also to react quickly to my Q of several weeks or more ago:
what's the most correct rankorder of consonance of MELODIC intervals.
Most respondents rapidly came to refer to the consonance of HARMONIC,
not melodic intervals. It seems that many scientists in this area
tacidly assume that the harmonic consonance constraints do also hold
for melodic intervals which by definition only entail IMPLICITE
harmony. So, I remain reluctant to such equalization, for the
following reason: the consonance of melodic intervals may be
evaluated by a listener in terms of wellformedness in melodic
structure. Thus, an ascending minor 2nd interval is a resolution to
the tonic as we know and, for that very reason, might be rated much
higher in "consonance" compared to its (harmonic) counterpart.
Ultimately, of course, the debate remains open because of the
somewhat fuzzy status of "consonance", with its long controversial
history, back to Pythagoras => Aristoxenos => Ptolemeus=>... Euler =>
Leibniz => Schopenhauer .... Plomp&Levelt& vd Geer =>....=> Costa et
al (Psychol. of Music, last issue of this year)....=> please,
complete the extrapolation yourself!

Piet V.
--
Piet G. Vos
section Perception NICI, U. Nijmegen
P.O.Box 9104
6500 HE Nijmegen NL
tel: +31 24 36126 31/20; fax: +31 24 361 60 66; vos@nici.kun.nl
home-page: http://www.nici.kun.nl/~vos


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