| Contents |
Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Part I: Syntax. Sound and music. Present theories of audition ; The generality of audition and the specificity of musical perception ; Specificity is not found solely in the particular aims of musical perception ; Note abstraction ; Experiment ; The physical diversity of auditory stimuli and the abstract unity of the musical note -- The material. The importance of institutionalized relationships of pitch ; Evidence from psychopathology: amusias ; Naturalization of intervals imposed on other divisions of the octave ; Interval constancies ; The traditional problem of simple relationships -- Syntax. Intervallic and syntactic relationships ; Cultural and structural integration ; Basic properties of tonal syntax ; The psychological process of interpretation -- Psychological origins and development of the sense of tonality. Precocity of tonal acculturation ; Probable stages of acculturation: melodic and harmonic information ; Experiment ; Formative elements apart from duration and frequency ; Historical evolution of the sense of tonality ; The dissolution of the sense of tonality in various contemporary systems ; The perception of serial music ; Experiment ; Music notation as a condition for recent syntactic developments -- Part II: Rhetoric. Musical discourse. Specificity of musical intelligence: perception and thought ; Definition of musical rhetoric ; Rhetoric and time in music ; Experiment -- Perception and linear organization. Influence of syntactic relationships on linear organization ; Punctuation of musical discourse: cadences ; Experiment ; Formal symbols and conventional signs in linear organization ; Melodic transposition ; Experiment ; Pervasive thematic structures ; Experiment -- Perception and simultaneous organization. Social and historical relativity ; Melody and harmony: figure and ground ; Experiment ; Various types of figure-ground relationship in musical works ; Polyphony ; Experiment ; The idea of integral perception -- Part III: Expression and meaning. The problem of meaning. The aesthetic controversy ; Importance of sociocultural attitudes ; Results of psychological investigations ; Reflective observations of musicologists ; Expression, evocation, and significance -- Consistency and coherence of semantic judgments. The virtual character of signification ; Experiment -- Themes of signification: symbolic elements. Difficulties in the analysis of musical structure ; Musical spatiality ; Schemes of tension and relaxation ; Problem posed by subjective significations: analysis of symbolic relationships in the musical expression of emotion -- Themes of signification: aspects and degrees of convention. The specific character of musical signification ; Ethos ; Pure convention: significations of timbre, mode, and tonality ; Mediated convention ; Discussion of the theories of Helmholtz and Stumpf ; Historical character of transfers ; Experiment ; Antithesis of transfer and knowledge of signification and reflection ; Historical-cultural significations -- Conclusion. |
| Abstract |
This translation of this classic text contains a balance of cultural and biological considerations. While arguing for the strong influence of exposure and of formal training on the way that music is perceived, the author draws on the literature concerning the amusias to illustrate his points about the types of cognitive abstraction that are performed by the listener. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliography (pages 365-366) and indexes. |
| Language | Translation of: La perception de la musique. |
| Other title |
Perception de la musique. |
| LCCN | 87027197 |
| ISBN | 0898596882 |
