08:30 Feb 2 

This answer is a bit late, but it might still help to know, the composer is Jocelyn Pook, who composed the score for Eyes Wide Shut. It is synthesizer music and to use a non-technical term, it sounds pretty creepy! I think the best thing therefore is the "dissonant harmonies", focusing on the dissonant, because although it doesn't have necessarily a positive or negative sense, I think it does communicate the creepiness.

14:28 Feb 1 

I've run out of space in my box on Sheila's answer! I don't think "couches musicales" means anything more than "layers of music/sound" and I don't get the impression that the author is saying anything specific about harmony. I'm sure Kate can provide more details but I'd be surprised if we were talking about advanced acoustic techniques here.

06:55 Feb 1 

Dissonance is an extremely relative term. Many musicians will use the term with its classical meaning, referring to specific notes that were not played together in the past. However, these notes are very common together in all sorts of music, from pop to jazz to classical, and would not be considered disagreeable to most people in certain contexts. But they are still technically dissonant. In classical music the tritone (pair F-B) was formally forbidden at one time, and is formally considered dissonant. And yet it is present in one of the most common chords in western music, the dominant 7 (G7 in the key of C) - present in some of the simplest of all two chord folk songs. It is unlikely that the author is referring to this V7 chord, but the example shows the range of usage of the music term dissonance.

22:06 Jan 31 

I agree with David Vaughn that there is no value judgment here.

wikipedia: Dissonance has several meanings, ALL related to conflict or incongruity.

Jazz musicians may aim for an effect, but they use dissonance for what it is (e.g. Monk with his "wrong" notes) and it has no value judgment attached.

Dissonance = "lack of harmony", "tension or clash", "disharmonious or unsuitable elements" and therefore IMO "clash", "ragged", "grating" are well within the ballpark.

19:05 Jan 31 

There are clearly several different interpretations in the answers here. Can you give an idea of whether this is seen as a normal and/or sought-after effect or if the author is in fact saying that it isn't a pleasing noise? In many areas of music (jazz is a prime example), musicians aim for this effect and wouldn't take kindly to descriptions using "clash", "ragged", "grating".

17:44 Jan 31 

Can you give us an idea what sort of film score this is? Is it a homogenous orchestral score? Or are these layers produced by music from differing sources played together? (For example it is not unusal for a film composer to superimpose orchestra over a pre-existing pop song)

16:39 Jan 31 

I think it is important to avoid going overboard here. The author seems not to be making much of a value judgement here, simply describing the effect of contrasting layers in a rather straightforward way. There is nothing wrong with dissonance, and there is no indication here that the dissonance is at all extreme. If the layers are quite independent (like two songs playing simultaneously in related keys) then the resulting dissonance may be subtle, only noticeable to the educated ear.