Resolution
The resolution of a dissonance.
What it means
Resolution designates the resolving of a dissonance into a consonance. The word is common in English and French; in German one usually says Auflösung. What is meant is the transition from a tense to a calm combined sound, in which the dissonant note moves on stepwise into a chord tone.
Musical use
Classical part-writing theory describes the treatment of a dissonance in three steps: preparation, dissonance, resolution. The resolution is thereby regulated. It proceeds stepwise, usually downward — the seventh falls, the fourth suspension falls to the third, the ninth falls to the octave. Resolved upward are above all leading tones, which lie a semitone below their goal, and certain suspensions from below.
The direction is not arbitrary. A dissonance continued in the wrong direction sounds unsatisfying, even if the goal sonority is consonant. In the dominant seventh chord, for instance, the leading tone and the seventh resolve simultaneously, one upward, the other downward; if either is led differently, the cadence loses force.
Music knows numerous ways of delaying or redirecting the resolution: it can be postponed by inserting other notes between the dissonance and the resolution; it can be reinterpreted by having the goal sonority itself be dissonant; and in later music it can be omitted altogether. Such deviations work because the customary resolution stands as an expectation in the ear.
The resolution of a dissonance follows fixed rules in traditional part-writing theory: the dissonant voice usually moves stepwise downward into a consonance, the leading tone upward. In twentieth-century music the obligation to resolve was given up. In English, resolution designates the same process, also in the figurative sense of a musical conclusion.
Performance practice
Give the dissonance weight and the resolution relaxation — not the other way around. Lead the dissonant note audibly into its goal and pull back the volume there. And deliberately seek out the resolutions when studying; they are the places where the music breathes.