Britannica explains that the dissconance in music is the impression of the tension or clash experienced by a listener when certain combinations of tones or notes are sounded together. (Dissonance | music, 2021)

Dissonance is used for create contrast and change in music. It is also used to drive music forward. The history of dissonance begins in Western music. The first relative dissonance appeared in free organum with more harmonic lines which gave more melodic independence.

By the beginning of the Renaissance period, tonal polyphony was well established and composers were driven by the emotions that music could generate. The major key for this was the use of the tension and release of dissonance and consonance. One of the leading composer was Josquin des Prez who had a more sophisticated attitude toward dissonance. He used suspension for expressive purposes which finally resolved to a consonance. Suspensions arose fom the chords occuring in contrapuntal music. In a suspension one note of the chord is sustained while the other notes change to a new chord. In the new chord this sustained note is dissonant.

Richard Wagner arguably was the first composer to explore dissonance as a compositional form. For example in his opera called Tristan und Isolde the composer used a heavily dissonant chord which immediately invokes a tension in the listener. This type of compositional form became the twentieth century atonality, known as the Tristan Chord.

Igor Stravinsky is also an example of the atonal movement. In his ballet The Rite of Spring he used so divisive dissonance that it caused riot on the first performance.

Baroque composers use dissonance to enhance the color of their compositions. In the second bar of Bach`s Well Tempered Clavier the left hand moves from E, a major 2^nd down to a D.

Throughout the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods composers used a more subtle dissonance with pedal notes (or pedal points). While the melody moves around, we hear a fast moving series of tension and release statements.

Reference

Encyclopedia Britannica. 2021. Dissonance | music. [online] Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/art/dissonance&gt; [Accessed 2 March 2021]

Encyclopedia Britannica. 2021. Consonance and dissonance | music. [online] Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/art/consonance-music&gt; [Accessed 2 March 2021]