I sometimes grow envious of humans and their abilities.  It seems that dogs were shortchanged when it comes to music appreciation, neuronal sensitivity, and the ability to play musical instruments and march in the band.  I've read that humans possess "extremely sensitive neurons"  along the auditory nerve, that help them hear pitch changes of as little as a 12th of an  octave.  Only bats can do better than that!  I wonder if Batman ever thought of music as an alternative career?  Getting back to my point, it's thought that  dogs can only hear changes of 1/3rd of an octave.  This lessens our ability to appreciate dissonance; the unstable, transitional notes that composers use to differentiate their pieces, to create dramatic tension within the composition.  We dogs love our consonance, stable harmonies, unisons and octaves.  We're  lovers of tradition,  not exactly avant-garde.  Most of us anyway.

Dissonance has snuck quite sneakily into many composers repertoire in the last centuries.  It's "been emancipated" and is now an acceptable element of the musical creation.  It speaks to those who appreciate the unexpected, the whimsical, the absurd, the fantastic.  It's not for everyone.  You humans are more about dissonance than we dogs are.  

Consonance and dissonance are familiar musical terms that have their correlates in other aspects of living.  Art is a theater that has witnessed a constant interplay of the traditional vs. the abstract, the familiar vs. the absurd. 
We look at a picture and feel a calm relaxation, consonance; or an unresolved tension, questioning, loss of balance.  Our brains have to reorient themselves to regain equilibrium.  The same thing happens as we're presented with the contradictions that life presents.  The point and the counterpoint.  Our brains experience cognitive dissonance.  It's uncomfortable,  so we seek out a safer harbor, an outlook that makes everything seem alright, even if it's not true.  At least that's what happens to lower animals, like dogs.

If I go to my Purina bowl and find a steak, instead of my usual chow, I guess that would be the type of dissonance that is pleasing to the stomach and the soul.  In society, there are some who appreciate a dynamic dissonance, surprise, chance; they love the free market and aren't overly concerned about disharmony. They see the high notes and low notes of the scale as mentally stimulating, pleasing to the ear, they can live with the idiosyncracies, and sometimes thrive on them. Discord can present opportunity. These types of individuals are often the creators, and the discoverers, the independent and eccentric.  Others are much happier in a stable, predictable, "harmonious" society of egalitarianism and predictability.  They seek balance, octaves and unisons.  They provide the lattice work that dissonance can build on. It makes no sense for one type to work at cross purposes to the other.  Musical appreciation allows for the individuality of the subject, there isn't a right or wrong to it.

We dogs tend to respond to soothing, harmonious music; as it relaxes us and resonates with our limbic systems.  Our auditory nerves aren't up to human standards, dissonance can be lost on us.  We do enjoy watching you human types respond to the many types of pattern and transition that come your way, in music, theater, art , economics and politics.  You put on quite a show.  In the end we know there must be a balance between consonance and dissonance for the work to be successful. That a cacophony of unconducted chaotic interludes, has somehow ended up in this sacred  symphony of creation, is  a source of continuing wonder and delight.

Buffy
Consonant Dissident

.