Music Cognition

Course:

Mus 312/ Cog 312

Basic Description:

An introduction to the psychological/cognitive mechanisms underlying musical thought processes.

Instructors:

Peter Jefferey, C-17-D-1 Firestone Library, 8 - 4237, jeffery@phoenix
John Puterbaugh, 207 Alexander, 8 - 4252, home 882 - 3519, john@music

Class meetings:

Lectures and Discussion Thursday, 1:30 - 4:20 Rm. 222 Palmer

Course Requirements:

All readings listed on a given date are to be read before that class.
Written critical summaries: For each session you are expected to
write a single page critical summary of one of the required readings
which is due at the beginning of class. A "critical summary" entails two
parts: first, a synopsis of the article which should illustrate both your
understanding of the text's salient arguments as well as your ability to
summarize these points succinctly and clearly. The second half should contain
your assessment of the article's weaknesses and strengths. We have included a
sample summary with the syllabus.
Class Discussions: Each student will also be required to lead one
class discussion in the course of the term. Note, this is not a presentation.
It is more an extended version of your weekly critical summaries, in which you
will compare and contrast all of the readings for a particular session and
critique the authors' analyses of the topic we will be discussing---eg,
Balzano's handling of musical pitch and timbre: what does he leave out of his
definition/discussion? Based on your synthesis, you will also be expected to
suggest topics for class discussion and to direct that discussion.
Midterm: Proposal for final paper. One page proposal along with
bibliography and/or notes for further development.
Final Paper: For this paper, you are expected to expand one of your
weekly summaries into a more developed argument. Please supply two copies;
format will be discussed in class. Due on May 14 (Dean's Date).

Grades:

participation 15%, leading a discussion 15%, critical summaries 40%, final paper 30%

February 8th "Music Cognition: Metaphor"

A general principle that has emerged as fundamental to cognition is that the
brain abstracts recurrent commonalities from the environment and encodes them
in the form of schematic representations as a basis for future categorization
and comprehension.

Music is a consequence of a general-purpose structure-abstracting process
exposed to a highly structured environment.

Music involves a myriad of context-dependent phenomena, some of which are
specific to music (consonance) and some of which are not (expectations and
implications, intuitions of coherence and anomaly, and memory).
- Jamshed Bharucha

Background Information

History of Cognitive Studies
The Physiology of the Ear
Simple Harmonic Motion
Introduction to Music Cognition

February 15th "Auditory Scene Analysis and Stream Segregation: Construction"

Hearing exists simply for the evolutionary advantages it confers.

The way the sensory inputs are grouped by our nervous system determines the
pattern we perceive.
- Albert Bregman

Readings:

"Breaking Acoustic Waves into Events," Handel, Listening
"Hearing Musical Stream," McAdams and Bregman, Foundations of Computer Music

February 22nd "Pitch, Scales, and Melody: Representation"

Pitch is the "morphophoric" medium that is most analogous to physical space.
- Roger Shepard

What is special about the human musical capacity is the ability to relate the sounded events
dynamically to one another, and to comprehend the multiplicity of structural functions of
the events at many different levels simultaneously.
- Carol Krumhansl

Readings:

"Musical Scales", "Melody:Attention and Memory" and
"Melodic Organization", Dowling and Harwood, Music Cognition
"Melodic Information Processing and Its Development," Dowling
"Melodic Contour in Hearing and Remebering Melodies," Dowling,
Musical Perceptions

February 29th "Tonality: Hierarchy"

The activation of schematic representations underlies the expectation of
events, the implication of abstract organizational units (such as keys or
meaning) and the concomitant sense of coherence.
- Jamshed Bharucha

Readings:

"The Processing of Pitch Combinations," Deutsch, The Psychology of Music
"Perceiving Tonal Structures in Music," Krumhansl, The American Scientist
"Tonality and Expectation," Bharucha, Musical Perceptions
"Describing the Mental Representation of Tonality in Music", Butler and Brown,
Musical Perceptions

March 7th "Time, Meter, and Rhythm: Representation (dynamic)"

Humans are built to detect real-world structure by detecting changes along physical
dimensions (i.e. contrasting values) and representing these changes as relations
(i.e. differences) along subjective dimensions.
- Mari Riess Jones

Readings:

"Dynamics of Musical Patterns: How do Melody and Rhythm Fit Together? ,"
Jones, Psychology and Music
"The Complexities of Rhythm," Gabrielsson from Psychology and Music
"Parallels Between Pitch and Time and How They Go Together," Monahan,
Psychology and Music

March 14th "Culture and Musical Context: Reification"

Readings:

"Cultural Contexts of Musical Experience," Dowling and Harwood,
Music Cognition
Other readings to be announced

March 22th "Mozart, A Case Study: Development, Pedagogy and Virtuosity"

Readings:

"Songsinging by Young and Old: A Developmental Approach to Music," Davidson
"Coming to Hear in a New Way in Musical Perceptions," Bamberger,
Musical Perceptions
"Development of the Perception of Musical Events," Pick and Palmer,
Psychology and Music
"The Music Listening Skills of Infants and Young Children," Trehub,
Psychology and Music

March 21rst Spring Break - no class

March 28th "Music Theory as Cognition: Formalization"

Readings:

"Perception: A Perspective from Music Theory," Cook from Musical Perceptions
Other readings to be announced

April 4th "Emotion and Meaning: Expectation"

The psycho-stylistic conditions which give rise to musical meaning, whether affective or
intellectual, are the same as those which communicate information
- Leonard Meyer

Readings:

"Emotion and Meaning," Dowling and Harwood from Music Cognition
"Emotion and Meaning in Music," Meyer, Musical Perceptions

April 11th "Music as Language: Universals"

Music listeners have constructed a set of intuitions or grammars about the structure of
music as a consequence of their experience with music.
- Stephen Handel

Readings:

"Music Theory as Psychology",
"Grouping Structure",
"Grouping Well-Formedness Rules",
"Psychological and Linguistic Connections," Ledahl and Jackendoff,
A Generative Theory of Tonal Music
"Grammars of Music and Language," Handel from Listening
"Music and Language: Parallels and Contrasts," Aiello, Musical Perceptions

April 18th "Modelling Music: Simulation"

Readings:

"Music Cognition and Perceptual Facilitation: A Connectionist Framework,"
Bharucha, Musical Perceptions
"Machine Tongues XII: Neural Networks," Dolson
"Music, Mind, and Meaning," Minsky, Computer Music Journal

April 25th "Timbre: Distinction"

Timbre is more a matter of perceiving underlying dynamics of physical processes
than perceiving the places of things in abstract ordered structures.
- Gerald Balzano

Readings:

"Exploration of Timbre by Analysis and Synthesis," Risset and Wessel, The Psychology of Music
"What are Musical Pitch and Timbre?," Balzano