scholarly journals The neo-Pythagorean view of musical structure in the light of music psychology

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Piotr Podlipniak
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Music Psychology ◽  
Tonal Hierarchy ◽  
Psychology Of Music ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Human Brains ◽  
Popular Speech

The aim of this paper is to show why the neo-Pythagorean claims concerning musical structure are out-of-date and require the incorporation of contemporary psychological knowledge. The neo-Pythagorean view of musical structure has been analyzed and confronted with the contemporary neuropsychological view of music perception. It has been also suggested that musical intervals exist solely in human brains as a kind of interpretation of acoustic sounds. These sounds can be interpreted differently depending on many factors, which the popular speech-to-song illusion clearly illustrates. Another example of neo-Pythagorean ideas about musical structure that need psychological knowledge is tonal hierarchy, which also exists solely in human brains. Therefore, the popular musicological description of musical intervals in terms of mathematical proportions is misleading. It has been proposed that current musicological theories should always be confronted and consistent with contemporary psychological knowledge. This implies closer cooperation between musicology and the psychology of music.

Toward a Comparative Psychology of Music Perception

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart H. Hulse ◽  
Suzanne C. Page
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Comparative Psychology ◽  
Absolute Pitch ◽  
European Starling ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
New Information ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Psychology Of Music ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Musicians and ethnomusicologists have long been interested in the idea of musical universals, the proposition that features of musical structure are common to the music of all human cultures. Recently, the development of new techniques and new theory makes it possible to ask whether the perceptual principles underlying music span not just human cultures but also other nonhuman species. A series of experiments addressing this issue from a comparative perspective show that a songbird, the European starling, can perceive pitch relations, a form of musical universal. However, the species transposes pitch relations across large shifts in tone height with difficulty. Instead, songbirds show a preference for learning pitch patterns on the basis of the absolute pitch of component tones. These results suggest further comparative studies of music perception may be especially worthwhile, not just for gathering new information about animals, but also for highlighting the principles that make human music perception unique.

scholarly journals Visualizing Music Psychology: A Bibliometric Analysis of Psychology of Music, Music Perception, and Musicae Scientiae from 1973 to 2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 205920431881178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Anglada-Tort ◽  
Katie Rose M. Sanfilippo
Keyword(s):  
Bibliometric Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Music Psychology ◽  
Total Growth ◽  
Psychology Of Music ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Clear Increase

Music psychology has grown drastically since being established in the middle of the 19th century. However, until now, no large-scale computational bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature in music psychology has been carried out. This study aims to analyze all published literature from the journals Psychology of Music, Music Perception, and Musicae Scientiae. The retrieved literature comprised a total of 2,089 peer-reviewed articles, 2,632 authors, and 49 countries. Visualization and bibliometric techniques were used to investigate the growth of publications, citation analysis, author and country productivity, collaborations, and research trends. From 1973 to 2017, with a total growth rate of 11%, there is a clear increase in music psychology research (i.e., number of publications, authors, and collaborations), consistent with the general growth observed in science. The retrieved documents received a total of 33,771 citations ( M = 16.17, SD = 26.93), with a median (Q1—Q3) of 7 (2—20). Different bibliometric indicators defined the most relevant authors, countries, and keywords as well as how they relate and collaborate with each other. Differences between the three journals are also discussed. This type of analysis, not without its limitations, can help understand music psychology and identify future directions within the field.

Musical Illusions and Phantom Words

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Deutsch
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Musical Ability ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Early Form ◽  
The Real ◽  
Musical Patterns ◽  
Psychology Of Music ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

In this groundbreaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech – many of which she discovered - have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns - differences that reflect both variations in brain organization and influences of language on music perception. They lead Deutsch to examine questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the ‘real’ music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other rare responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why are some people unable to recognize simple tunes? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are most people subject to stuck tunes, or ‘earworms’? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described here are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. So the book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.

scholarly journals Relating Musical Structure and Content to Aesthetic Response: A Model and Analysis of Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 110

2005 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Ockelford
Keyword(s):  
Music Theory ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Music Psychology ◽  
The Core ◽  
Physical Context ◽  
Musical Event ◽  
New Framework

AbstractA model is presented which aims to show how, for listeners familiar with a given style, aesthetic response to music may be related to its ‘structure’ (as defined in relation to ‘zygonic’ theory) and ‘content’ (the particular perceived qualities of sound that pertain to a given musical event). The model combines recent empirical findings from music psychology with other approaches adapted from music theory and philosophy. Intramusical considerations, which form the core of the model, are positioned within a broader socio-cultural, cognitive and physical context. The new framework is used to inform an analysis of Beethoven's Piano Sonata op.110, which examines in particular the notions of teleology in music and narrative metaphor.

MUSIC LISTENING IN INTERDISCIPLINARY VIEW

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 528
Author(s):  
Mirdza Paipare
Keyword(s):  
Music Therapy ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Music Pedagogy ◽  
Music Therapist ◽  
Music Psychology ◽  
Communication Development ◽  
Everyday Lives

Very few researches focus on music as an activity and most often it is linked to music perception, therefore – music psychology. Similarly the theories on this question are developed. Interrelations between music therapy and music psychology, as well as the role of listening and music listening in music pedagogy, psychology and music therapy are little researched. The goal of this article is to intentionally draw attention to the significance of this very common thing in our everyday lives – listening – in communication, development of cognitive and phenomenological skills and abilities (perception, recognition, describing, explaining). These skills and abilities are necessary in the work of pedagogue and psychologist, and especially music therapist.  

scholarly journals Listening as a Creative Act

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan B. L. Smith ◽  
Isaac Schankler ◽  
Elaine Chew
Keyword(s):  
Structural Unit ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Cognition ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Software System ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Tonal Music ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
Machine Improvisation

Some important theories of music cognition, such as Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983)A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, posit an archetypal listener with an ideal interpretation of musical structure, and many studies of the perception of structure focus on what different listeners have in common. However, previous experiments have revealed that listeners perceive musical structure differently, depending upon their music background and their familiarity with the piece. It is not known what other factors contribute to differences among listeners’ formal analyses, but understanding these factors may be essential to advancing our understanding of music perception.We present a case study of two listeners, with the goal of identifying the differences between their analyses, and explaining why these differences arose. These two listeners analyzed the structure of three performances, a set of improvised duets. The duets were performed by one of the listeners and Mimi (Multimodal Interaction for Musical Improvisation), a software system for human-machine improvisation. The ambiguous structure of the human-machine improvisations as well as the distinct perspectives of the listeners ensured a rich set of differences for the basis of our study.We compare the structural analyses and argue that most of the disagreements between them are attributable to the fact that the listeners paid attention to different musical features. Following the chain of causation backwards, we identify three more ultimate sources of disagreement: differences in the commitments made at the outset of a piece regarding what constitutes a fundamental structural unit, differences in the information each listener had about the performances, and differences in the analytical expectations of the listeners.

Neural Basis of Music Perception: Melody, Harmony, and Timbre

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-211
Author(s):  
Stefan Koelsch
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Auditory System ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Auditory Brainstem ◽  
Implicit Knowledge ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Auditory Sensory Memory

During listening, acoustic features of sounds are extracted in the auditory system (in the auditory brainstem, thalamus, and auditory cortex). To establish auditory percepts of melodies and rhythms (i.e., to establish auditory “Gestalten” and auditory objects), sound information is buffered and processed in the auditory sensory memory. Musical structure is then processed based on acoustical similarities and rhythmical organization. In addition, musical structure is processed according to (implicit) knowledge about musical regularities underlying scales, melodic and harmonic progressions, and so on. These structures are based on both local and (hierarchically organized) nonlocal dependencies. This chapter reviews neural correlates of these processes, with regard to both brain-electric responses to sounds, and the neuroanatomical architecture of music perception.

Response-Time Measures as a Means of Exploring Tonal Hierarchies

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr Janata ◽  
Daniel Reisberg
Keyword(s):  
Response Time ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Recency Effect ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Tonal Hierarchy ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Tonic Triad ◽  
Response Time Measure

We explore the possibility of studying music perception with responsetime measures. Subjects heard either a chord (tonic triad) or scale prime, followed by a single note, and indicated whether the note did or did not belong in the primed key. Overall, the data resemble the tonal hierarchy previously demonstrated with other methods, thus establishing the validity of the response-time measure. In addition, the scale primes superimpose a recency effect on the standard hierarchy, as would be expected from a serially presented stimulus. We discuss what this implies about tonal hierarchies, and the use of response-time measures to study the online processes of music listening. We also report data for nondiatonic tones.

Hearing and Seeing Musical Expression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic McIver Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Musical Performances ◽  
Psychology Of Music

Everybody assumes (1) that musical performances are sonic events and (2) that their expressive properties are sonic properties. This paper discusses recent findings in the psychology of music perception that show that visual information combines with auditory information in the perception of musical expression. The findings show at the very least that arguments are needed for (1) and (2). If music expresses what we think it does, then its expressive properties may be visual as well as sonic; and if its expressive properties are purely sonic, then music expresses less than we think it does. And if the expressive properties of music are visual as well as sonic, then music is not what we think it is—it is not purely sonic.

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