The Consonance and Dissonance Debate

I'll make two quotes:

1. Alan Bush, writing in the Introduction to Erno Lendvai's book, 'Bela
Bartok, An introduction to his music' (re Schoenberg's dictum that
consonance and dissonance are exactly equivalent):

"Of course dissonance is equivalent to consonance in the sense that both are
perfectly permissible ingredients of musical art"

2. Myself, (sorry) on rec.music.theory, many moons ago

I find that notions of 'consonance' and dissonance' don't help in a general
musical context, and I prefer 'dynamic' and 'static', implying that the
former is 'in motion' and the latter 'at rest'. Any kind of sonority can be
either, depending upon several factors all based on context.

Musical sonorities often behave like particles in Newtonian Mechanics (and
possibly Relativistic Mechanics), and have velocity, mass, inertia and
momentum, and consequently kinetic and potential energy. When considered in
this way, these sonorities have a much more 'plastic' quality, free from
'absolutes' which can obscure or defeat the very intentions of the composer.

My '3'¢ worth

Mark G