# Expand upon the idea that music is just tension and release.



## SimonCharlesHanna (Jan 5, 2019)

I've heard the idea many many times that music is tension and release but I can't recall ever hearing/reading anyone expand that idea. 

I understand the premise but it's very vague.

Any resources or information to share?


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## gyprock (Jan 5, 2019)

Tension: not getting paid for 2 months
Release: finally got paid


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## synergy543 (Jan 5, 2019)

Norman Ludwin goes into this in his course on 20th Century music (based on Perschetti's book 20th Century Harmony) when he discusses tension of intervals. Also, Hindemith covers this extensively as a compositional tool in his book The Craft of Musical Composition. In addition, there is a tremendous wealth of information in thesis papers published online. Searching for these is a bit like going after a needle in a haystack, but when you find one of interest, they are golden!


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## JohnG (Jan 5, 2019)

I've heard this expression, often delivered with some level of pretense / condescension, but it doesn't mean anything useful to me.


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## ed buller (Jan 5, 2019)

I'm not sure what you mean but to my mind music from the common practice period is basically in one of two states. Tension and Release or Dissonance and Consonance . And music that really started in the 19th century expanded on that distinction and prolonged the Dissonance to breaking point . Wagner's Tristan prelude is a text book study in this. For most people the Musical 20th Century began with "prelude l'apres midi du faune" in 1894. By now Debussy had blurred the lines almost completely between the two states and the music just drifted along in a state of stasis. As if to emphasize this Debussy finally ends the piece with a fragile cadence. The only one !

Cadential activity is considered the briefest and perhaps clearest example of these forces at work.

G7 (2nd Inv ) to C root is a classic example with the tritone resolving outwards. This was an expected sonority throughout the common practice period . Beethoven began the Romantic period with his 3rd symphony and played about with our expectations in this matter but it really fell to Wagner and his use of two French 6 chords played sequentially , neither doing what was expected of them, that shattered the norms, causing a breakdown in society, soup kitchens and marshal Law throughout most of Europe.

By the twentieth Century all bets where off !......Schoenbergs "Pellas and Melisande" really took tonality and the business of tension and release as far as it could possibly go in what is perhaps the finest example of tonal foreplay ever heard !....he realized this himself and in a fit of pique threw away the rule book and invented the most nonsensical and unlistenable musical language just to get even. Thankfully BERG ignored him and wrote Wozzack and we got through it.

best


ed


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Jan 7, 2019)

Thanks for all the responses so far.

I understand the concept of tension and release within intervals and Ed has touched on musical 'states' as being either 'tense or released' but only really applied it within the confines of intervals. 

Does that mean that early music which didn't utilize dissonance fully never displayed tension and release? My guess is that it did (have tension and release) which makes me feel that the idea is more profound than just intervals.


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## StillLife (Jan 7, 2019)

I don't think tension and release apply only to the tonal. There can be tension and release in rhythm, in velocity, in color... Tension - as I have come to understand it - is being led, for a period of time, off the clear musical path we were following and release is finding oneself on that that path again. 
But I have studied no music theory. I did watch Mike Verta masterclasses though, and what he has to say about the concepts (and about contrast, patterns, the familiar and the unfamiliar) makes perfect sense to me.


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## bbunker (Jan 7, 2019)

You say you want to read about someone expanding on the idea that all music is tension and release, eh?!?

Two words: Heinrich. Schenker.

Sorry. And you're welcome.


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## ed buller (Jan 7, 2019)

Yes basically this is schenkerian anylasis in a nutshell .

Tension and release is possibly through color and rhythm . Speed too . Listen to Drumming by Steve Reich !

Early music was monophonic . The Notre Dame school expanded this greatly but most of the tension and release at this point was basically the resolving of what they then regarded as dissonance 

Best

Ed


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## anp27 (Jan 7, 2019)

ed buller said:


> Listen to Drumming by Steve Reich!



Thanks so much for that Steve Reich recommendation  I was actually hoping for more musical examples/recommendation in this thread...


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## BenG (Jan 7, 2019)

Schenkerian analysis truly exemplifies music's tension /release relationship and breaking down music into its most basic form quickly reveals this. 

Even non-Western music follows the same premise of dissonance vs. consonance. E.g. Listen to Indian/Persian music and you'll hear the performer lean on dissonant intervals constantly (2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th) before resolving them.


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## gregh (Jan 7, 2019)

BenG said:


> Schenkerian analysis truly exemplifies music's tension /release relationship and breaking down music into its most basic form quickly reveals this.
> 
> Even non-Western music follows the same premise of dissonance vs. consonance. E.g. Listen to Indian/Persian music and you'll hear the performer lean on dissonant intervals constantly (2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th) before resolving them.



probably not universal tho 
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18635


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## Quasar (Jan 7, 2019)

A great resource for thinking of music as tension/release? Mahler's 9th.


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## Wunderhorn (Jan 7, 2019)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> Does that mean that early music which didn't utilize dissonance fully never displayed tension and release? My guess is that it did (have tension and release) which makes me feel that the idea is more profound than just intervals.



As was said before there are other forms of tension/release (rhythm, speed, dynamics) but I would like to add another aspect to this that people in earlier time did not hear what we hear today. Their perception of tension/release in music was not trained by thunderous crescendi of some trailer music but their perception stems from different references which to our ears might sound of little impact yet it should be seen in the context of their scope of available options. Music had to and did evolve in two parts. Not just making it, composing and developing techniques and ever more complex harmonies, but at the same time the ability to listen and comprehension had to go hand in hand with it.


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## Wunderhorn (Jan 7, 2019)

Generally music uses the semantics of the dualistic system here on earth. Even though it may be the art form that is closest in able to touch the concept of trinity, the third part that would describe the inclusion of all invisible and otherwise inexplicable. The realm of the absolute interacting with the realm of the relative.

Therefore it makes sense to observe all the elements that give music its narrative and expression. A weaving of patterns of various strings moving from one into its opposite - back and forth and sometimes simultaneously in multiple layers.
From consonance to dissonance, from sparse to thick orchestration, from bold to fragile - it is always two extremes in between we establish the conversation. As musicians all these we choreograph them together in a dance in an effort to conjure up the ineffable and to give it a shape and form that can be experienced.


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## leon chevalier (Jan 7, 2019)

Too me, it's really telling a story that need tension and release. And writing music is telling a story. But that applies to everything : book, cinema, painting, architecture. If nothing happens, no change in angle, in color, in motif... You loose your audience, your public. Yes it's not an absolute rules -Their no rule in art- But it applies to most of what we see.

Let's take a paint. Imagine a hill in front, your eyes follow the shape of the hill, on top your eyes meet a blue sky with a transparent, almost inexistent cloud. You're wondering if the cloud shape is meaning more than you see. Then your eyes continue to follow the hill. That lead to a little tree at the back, that have an unexpected color, maybe it's in the shadow of the hill, [and so on...] Their we are. The painter told us a story.

To come back to music, any theme development from any master tell us a story, with... tension and release. If I imagine a music without ANY tension and release, it's a single note, constant pitch, constant volume, for 5 minutes...


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## muk (Jan 8, 2019)

Schenker is the right keyword. Another one would be 'Sonata principle'. It's basic idea is that in a sonata form harmonic tension is created by modulating to (Überleitung/transition) and establishing the dominant in the Seitensatz/second theme group. We now have two keys established (tonic and dominant), and these are two keys that strive towards different directions, thus creating tension. (That's why the second theme group is always in the dominant, never in the subdominant. The subdominant strives towards the tonic, thus releasing tension).
The sonata form gains it's impetus from that. In the reprise, the tension needs to be released. And this happens by the secondary theme group now being presented in the tonic key.

The 'Sonata principle'-theory states that sonata form is all about creating and resolving this harmonic tension between tonic and dominant. It has come a bit out of fashion in recent years. Newer theories take a more holistic approach and treat the harmonic tension as one important factor amongst others. But still the idea that tension and release are one factor in musical form is very present.


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## Saxer (Jan 8, 2019)

Interesting too...


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## mikeh-375 (Jan 8, 2019)

JohnG said:


> I've heard this expression, often delivered with some level of pretense / condescension, but it doesn't mean anything useful to me.



I'm surprised John....

I think tension and release is an essential over-arching principle in all the individual elements in music and as a whole, especially in fields that use expanded/chromatic tonality through to atonality, where the flow and rhetoric needs to be regulated by tension and release in order to create a coherent sense of emotion, travel and arrival.
Tension and release is surely important in film scoring too, from the crudest shift in emotion, or perhaps subtle shadings, or to a calculated energising climax, synched to picture.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jan 8, 2019)

Wagner. That’s his whole motus operandi.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jan 8, 2019)

Also Debussy wandering off so beautifully from tradition to show new ways of creating harmonic tension and release.


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## I like music (Jan 8, 2019)

Tension = asking your significant other about whether you can using the living room as a studio
Release = releasing half the equity in your house post-divorce, so you can finally get your studio


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jan 8, 2019)

Tension: inhale
Release: exhale
Final cadence:


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## bbunker (Jan 8, 2019)

Music that doesn't operate on tension and release: (among others, of course)


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## JohnG (Jan 8, 2019)

Man -- Youtube really sounds hideous. All that high end squeaking -- yuck!

But thanks @bbunker for the counter-examples. I think it's the verbiage / semantics of "tension and release" that bug me. I can conceive of what people mean, it's just that the expression seems so vague that you could drive (almost) anything through it and claim it's "tension and release."


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jan 8, 2019)

I think one way to look at it is that everyone has a different threshold for tension and for release. Upon first hearing jazz, one might find tension everywhere, as the traditional resolution of chords and melodic phrases goes out the window. But then, over time, in the seasoned listener, there is less tension perceived, or rather what was once tension becomes release (ah yes, familiar 7ths and 9ths, etc). Same thing with 20th Century contemporary writing (all tension until you get accustomed to the new landscape). I guess my point is that tension-release is a relative technique (except for things like cracking a branch with your hands, orgasms, a big EDM drop, etc).


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## bbunker (Jan 8, 2019)

A problem with looking at music (or any other kind of expression, really) as "tension and release" is that the idea begets, and usually demands a teleological perspective. There must be an origin, a destination, and some path to overcome on the way to the destination. And teleology spreads like a virus to things that don't operate in that way. I'm sure that any number of scholars have looked at the Javanese Gamelan tradition and seen in the vast expanses of space between the strokes of the largest gong a kind of tension and subsequent release. Which is kind of like finding tension and release in the space between ticks of a clock, or in the interim of a heartbeat. Which is to say: it can be a neurosis.

It can also lead to analysis that ignores the reason that something is actually good. Borrowing an idea from the Great Courses class on Screenwriting: we don't watch Oedipus Rex because we want to find out if he'll end up with his mother. We already know what's going to happen - we watch because of the illogical human elements, because of his absurd and illogical response to the situation. In the same way, we don't listen to Haydn to see if that dominant chord actually resolves to the tonic. Maybe Schenkerians do. But literally everything else in a Haydn sonata is more important than the "drama" of a cadence. It's a bit like reading Thackeray to see if he ends sentences with a period or a comma. (Full stop for the brits in the house.) You could. I guess. You could even write a post on forums saying "Expand on the idea that novels are just a bunch of sentences with periods at the end." Sorry for the exceptional snarkiness of that last sentence, by the way 

^ Note the absence of period at the end there. Subversive to the end, I am


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## Dewdman42 (Jan 8, 2019)

There will of course be tension and release in music. If it were only one or the other at all times, it would be boring. However, this is hardly the basis of music. Music is not "just tension and release". 

I prefer to think of tension as being on a scale...you can have increasing or decreasing levels of it, and there can be a tension rythmn for how the tension comes in and goes out and its just one of many factors that effect musical passages along with harmonic rhythm, melody, counterpoint and all the rest to manipulate the senses.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Jan 8, 2019)

If I put on my mad-scientist lab coat on, all music is composed of sounds that can be broken down into individual sine waves (harmonics). As they vibrate/are excited, they move from an attack (tension - fast or slow) to a release. So all music can be broken down to tension and release at its most elemental form.


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## Parsifal666 (Jan 8, 2019)




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## brenneisen (Jan 8, 2019)

Ned Bouhalassa said:


> If I put on my mad-scientist lab coat on, all music is composed of sounds that can be broken down into individual sine waves (harmonics). As they vibrate/are excited, they move from an attack (tension - fast or slow) to a release. So all music can be broken down to tension and release at its most elemental form.



NERD Bouhalassa!

(and you're right. let's go subatomic now)


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## gregh (Jan 8, 2019)

JohnG said:


> I can conceive of what people mean, it's just that the expression seems so vague that you could drive (almost) anything through it and claim it's "tension and release."



Hence the use of probabilistic analyses which let you start measuring what is going on - the example books on this I always give are Huron's "Sweet Anticipation" and Margulis' "On Repeat". These analyses ground music appreciation in what we know of human psychology and the way brains work - as prediction machines at multiple scales. So "tension and release" is about building up and breaking down (or modulating) sequences of expectation, or predictability in any and all aspects of the musical signal and its learned social coding.


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