Music cognition
Encyclopedia
Music cognition is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mental processes that support musical behaviors, including perception
, comprehension, memory, attention, and performance. Originally arising in fields of psychoacoustics
and sensation, cognitive theories of how people understand music more recently encompass neuroscience
, music theory
, music therapy
, computer science
, philosophy
, and linguistics
.
Some aspects of cognitive music theory describe how sound
is perceived by a listener. While the study of human interpretations of sound is called psychoacoustics
, the cognitive aspects of how listeners interpret sounds as musical events is commonly known as music cognition.
In the 1970s, music was studied in the sciences mainly for its acoustical and perceptual properties, in what were then relatively novel disciplines such as psychophysics
and music psychology
. Music scholars criticized much of this research for focusing too much on low-level issues of sensation and perception, often using impoverished stimuli (e.g., small rhythmic fragments) or music restricted to the Western classical repertoire, as well as a general unawareness of the role of music in its wider social and cultural context. However, the cognitive revolution
made scientists more aware of the role and importance of these aspects.
Looking back briefly, twenty years ago music went either completely unmentioned in psychology handbooks or appeared only in a subsection on pitch or rhythm perception. Today it is recognized, along with vision and language, as an important and informative domain in which to study the various aspects of cognition which activate psychic processes, including expectation, emotion, perception and memory, and how they apply to therapy. The role of music scholars and scientists in this latter research seems to be greater than ever. It could well be that music cognition will evolve into a prominent discipline contributing to our understanding of music just as much as more traditional analytic frameworks.
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
, comprehension, memory, attention, and performance. Originally arising in fields of psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
and sensation, cognitive theories of how people understand music more recently encompass neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
, music theory
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
, music therapy
Music therapy
Music therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their...
, computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
.
History
Music cognition clearly came to be recognized as a discipline in the early 1980s, with the creation of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, and the journal Music Perception. The field of music cognition focuses on how the mind makes sense of music as it is heard. It also deals with the related question of the cognitive processes involved when musicians perform music. Like language, music is a uniquely human capacity that arguably played a central role in the origins of human cognition. The ways in which music can illuminate fundamental issues in cognition have been underexamined, or even Austin dismissed as epiphenomenal. However, cognition in music is more and more acknowledged as fundamental to our understanding of cognition as a whole, hence music cognition should be able to contribute both conceptually and methodologically to cognitive science. Topics in the field include the following and others:- A listener's perception of grouping structure (motiveMotif (music)In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
s, phrasePhrase (music)In music and music theory, phrase and phrasing are concepts and practices related to grouping consecutive melodic notes, both in their composition and performance...
s, sections, etc.) - RhythmRhythmRhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
and meter (perception and production) - KeyKey (music)In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...
inference - Expectation (including melodic expectationMelodic expectationIn music cognition melodic expectation is the tendency for a person listening to a melody to have a feeling or expectation for what might come next in the melody...
). - Musical similarity
- EmotionEmotionEmotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
al, affective, or arousal response - Expressive, musical performance
- Conceptual processing
Some aspects of cognitive music theory describe how sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
is perceived by a listener. While the study of human interpretations of sound is called psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
, the cognitive aspects of how listeners interpret sounds as musical events is commonly known as music cognition.
In the 1970s, music was studied in the sciences mainly for its acoustical and perceptual properties, in what were then relatively novel disciplines such as psychophysics
Psychophysics
Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they effect. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, more completely, as "the analysis of perceptual...
and music psychology
Music psychology
Music psychology,or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of psychology or a branch of musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behavior and musical experience...
. Music scholars criticized much of this research for focusing too much on low-level issues of sensation and perception, often using impoverished stimuli (e.g., small rhythmic fragments) or music restricted to the Western classical repertoire, as well as a general unawareness of the role of music in its wider social and cultural context. However, the cognitive revolution
Cognitive revolution
The cognitive revolution is the name for an intellectual movement in the 1950s that began what are known collectively as the cognitive sciences. It began in the modern context of greater interdisciplinary communication and research...
made scientists more aware of the role and importance of these aspects.
Looking back briefly, twenty years ago music went either completely unmentioned in psychology handbooks or appeared only in a subsection on pitch or rhythm perception. Today it is recognized, along with vision and language, as an important and informative domain in which to study the various aspects of cognition which activate psychic processes, including expectation, emotion, perception and memory, and how they apply to therapy. The role of music scholars and scientists in this latter research seems to be greater than ever. It could well be that music cognition will evolve into a prominent discipline contributing to our understanding of music just as much as more traditional analytic frameworks.
See also
- Cognitive MusicologyCognitive musicologyCognitive musicology is a branch of Cognitive Science concerned with computationally modeling musical knowledge with the goal of understanding both music and cognition. More broadly, it can be considered the set of all phenomena surrounding computational modeling of musical thought and action...
- Embodied music cognitionEmbodied music cognitionEmbodied music cognition is a direction within systematic musicology interested in studying the role of the human body in relation to all musical activities....
- Culture in music cognitionCulture in music cognitionCulture in music cognition refers to the impact that a person's culture has on their music cognition, including their preferences, emotion recognition, and musical memory...
- Music and the brainMusic and the brainMusic and the brain is the science that studies the neural mechanisms that underlie musical behaviours in humans and animals. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities. It also is increasingly concerned with the brain basis for...
- Cognitive neuroscience of musicCognitive neuroscience of musicThe cognitive neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. Methods include functional magnetic resonance imaging , transcranial magnetic stimulation , magnetoencephalography , electroencephalography , and positron...
- Music therapyMusic therapyMusic therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their...
Encyclopedia entries
- Palmer, Caroline/Melissa K. Jungers (2003): Music Cognition. In: Lynn Nadel: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Vol. 3, London: Nature Publishing Group, pp. 155–158.
Introductory reading
- Patel, Anirrudh D. (2010). Music, language, and the brain. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Day, Kingsley (October 21, 2004). "Music and the Mind: Turning the Cognition Key". Observer online.
- Jourdain, Robert (1997). Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-14236-2.
- Honing, Henkjan (2011). "Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening." New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4228-0.
- Levitin, Daniel J.Daniel LevitinProfessor Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D. is a prominent American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, record producer, musician, and writer...
(2006). "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession." New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94969-0 - Purwins & Hardoon (2009). "Trends and Perspectives in Music Cognition Research and Technology." Connection Science. 21(2-3), 85-88.
- Snyder, Bob (2000). "Music and Memory: an introduction" The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-69237-6.
Intermediate reading
- Deutsch, D. (Ed.) (1999). The Psychology of Music, 2nd Edition.San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-213565-2.
- Dowling, W. Jay and Harwood, Dane L. (1986). Music Cognition. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-221430-7.
- Hallam, Cross, & Thaut, (eds.) (2008). The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Krumhansl, Carol L. (2001). Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514836-3.
- Parncutt, Richard (1989). Harmony: A Psychoacoustical Approach. Berlin: Springer.
- Sloboda, John A. (1985). The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-852128-6.
- Lerdahl, F., and Jackendoff, R. (1996) A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262621076.
- Temperley, D. (2004). The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262701051.
- Thompson, W. F.William Forde ThompsonWilliam Forde "Bill" Thompson is a Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University, where he conducts research on music, emotion, and performance. He is Director of the .From 2007 to 2009, he was President of the...
(2009). Music, Thought, and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of MusicMusic, Thought, and FeelingMusic, Thought, and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of Music is a book written by psychologist William Forde Thompson and published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.-Reviews:...
New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195377071. - Zbikowski, Lawrence M. (2004). Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0195140231.
- North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2008). The Social and Applied Psychology of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198567424.
Journal articles
- Cross, Ian (1998). "Music Analysis and Music Perception." Music Analysis 17(1).
- Gur, Golan (2008). "Body, Forces, and Paths: Metaphor and Embodiment in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Conceptualization of Tonal Space" Music Theory Online 14(1).
- Honing, Henkjan (2006). "Computational modeling of music cognition: A case study on model selection." Music Perception 23(5), 365–376.
- Huron, David (1999). "Music and Mind: The foundation of cognitive musicology (The 1999 Ernst Bloch Lectures)" "Berkeley, University of California Press"
- Purwins, Herrera, Grachten, Hazan, Marxer, Serra (2008). Computational Models of Music Perception and Cognition (Part I, Part II) Physics of Life Reviews 5(3), 151-182. PDF Document