“The Art of Setting the Senses on Edge”

Sunday, June 8th, 2014

That’s how Anthony Tommasini titled his excellent column on music and dissonance (NYT, June 1, 14). In reference to Milton’s use of “barbaric dissonance,” the author waded–no–jumped right into the many understandings of dissonance from politics, to music, to psychology. I had been the most familiar with cognitive dissonance as that state of internal tension arising from contradictions, confusions, that we must make right. Those eternal puzzles that cause our heads to spin. Problems that leap at us during the night and steal our sleep away.

Well, Tommasini’s discussion of the clashing, barbarous, discordant sounds in music are not unlike those tight-wire puzzles in novels. Such cases of dissonance indeed set “the senses on edge.”  Here are a few cases that occur to me at the moment when the author:

1) dangles a subtle unknown before the reader with just a brush of puzzlement. What could this mean? Lead to?

2) two barbarous acts confront the reader, yet the narrator isn’t aware of the contradiction. You want to cry out–look, can’t you see!

3) a fine mesh of small descriptors about a character hints at impending transformation–or disaster! We don’t know which.

4) a directly-declared, barbaric crime (Sherlock-style), yet you know that there will be nothing direct or obvious about the resolution. Arthur Conan Doyle makes sure of that.

Next up: Norman Mailer’s hunt to find a narrator “more intelligent than he was.”

Linda

Tags: Anthony Tommasini, Arthur Conan Doyle, music
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