About Consonance

The Non Profit Music Foundation has among its activities the promotion of classical contemporary consonant music, if we can still call it classical. Since 2003 we have promoted this kind of music and have always had the need to clarify what consonant means.

To make a long story short, if you are a composer or a publisher and you believe that consonant music is the same as tonal music or music that sounds beautiful, you are wrong. The following example will clarify this. What is not consonant music? 4'33" by John Cage or Helicopter String Quartet by Karlheinz Stockhausen. So if the music a composer writes doesn't match the previous works it's probably consonant.

We call consonant music all the written music that brings together the composer, the performers and the audience. It's simple: a composer writes the work, a performer reads it and the audience understands it.

A score that has more explanations and reasoning about the work itself than the notes on the staves is not consonant music. And it never will be.

It is precisely the absence of consonant music in the programming of the concert halls that has caused the majority of the audience to leave these halls. Our purpose is the opposite. Get them back. That's why the motto of the Cum Laude Music Awards is to premiere, perform, record and broadcast new works to a new audience.
Cum Laude Music Awards
Premiering, Performing, Recording and Broadcasting New Music for a New Audience