The dissonance in Boulez "Sonata No.1 for piano" is obvious and grating. Church composers used "passing notes" to introduce dissonance into conventional harmony (Bach: "Kyrie, Gott Vater In Ewigkeit"). Melodic suspension in Mariah Carey's "Without You" and Antonio Lotti's "Crucifixus", which uses 49 suspensions in just 41 bars!

Wagner in his 1865 opera "Tristan and Isolde" raised hackles with a deliberately unresolved set of suspensions. The band Coldplay use the same device in the song "Politik".