“A tritone is very dissonant, so the dominant seventh chord really wants to ‘resolve’ to something more sweet.” “I see you shiver with antici——” It’s not diss

“A tritone is very dissonant, so the dominant seventh chord really wants to ‘resolve’ to something more sweet.” “I see you shiver with antici——” It’s not dissonance that makes you want to hear the completion of the sentence, rather, it’s grammar. If you play a tritone out of context, there is no need for it to resolve, but you can cast context around it by adding a resolution to a tonic just after. The tritone has a culturally-learned grammatical role in western music; and that role is not a universal law of aesthetics. “——pation.”