Wasn’t dissonance emancipated ?
That should mean freedom from boundaries, no hierarchy : simply equality. Instead it rapidly came to mean something quite unlike that : an enforced equality. Arnold Schoenberg fought that fight but it’s not settled yet. I doubt if I can settle it either, but I want to make some suggestions.
With my music and with my words I have been emphasizing the recognition and use of a natural order for the harmonic aspect of music : the pitch proportions found in the overtone series . In this way of tuning music ” by ear ” the goal appears to be total consonance.
But there are a host of inharmonic proportions which we use and enjoy in music : large bells and gongs especially. If we make it a rule to integrate these with overtone harmonies consonantly we must analyze their pitch complexes in order to be able to connect them to other pitches in the musical totality . If this cannot for technical reasons be done quantitatively it can be done by ear. So it would not be good composition to require strict extended just tuning . This approach would be enforced consonance.
There is a role for dissonance in such tuning. Exactly where the border between consonance and dissonance is perceived will be somewhat unpredictable. It is contextual .