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Consonance In Music (Definition) and the Meaning of Tonality
Recall that consonance in music is a function of simple ratios of frequenceies among the scale notes of a key. And tonality means the key itself, including the tonic note, scale, and chords related to the tonic note. The problem is that all major triads are consonances. So your poor brain has trouble identifying which of the two chords is the tonic chord.
Music depends for its vitality on establishing tonality, then disturbing it, then recovering it. Just like drama. If it’s done right, music is drama. You start out in some sort of “normal” situation. Then someone or something comes along to upset things—which makes the situation dramatically interesting.
As every dramatist knows, you cannot wreak delicious havoc upon an established order unless you first establish the order upon which you can wreak the delicious havoc.
In music, you first have to establish order—tonality—unambiguously before you can disturb it. If you don’t establish tonality, your brain has no context in which to process subsequent sonic information.