Abstract
This book aims to “provide a scientific explanation for the core part-writing skills” and “to provide a science-based account of musical texture” (p. vii). It focuses on three topics: the basics of auditory perception, perceptual accounts for part-writing rules, and musical scene analysis. Huron proposes the usefulness of conventional voice-leading rules for parsing musical pieces, and this proposition is supported by an extensive range of empirical evidence. He further argues for the universality of this usefulness beyond Baroque music and polyphonic music.
The book opens with a brief summary of voice-leading rules in the Baroque chorale style, some of which will be given perceptual accounts in later chapters. Chapter 3 introduces key concepts around which the argument of this book revolves, such as auditory images, auditory streams, and auditory scene analysis. Chapters 4–6 are devoted to explaining the basics of hearing and auditory perception, such as the components of sounds, harmonicity, toneness, auditory masking, and the perception of an auditory stream. Classical and contemporary studies of auditory perceptions are presented to concisely explain auditory phenomena.
Chapters 7–12 are devoted to exploring the perceptual and psychological rationales for the rules of conventional voice leading. These rules are rephrased along perceptual and psychological lines, with Huron referring to them as “preference rules.” These preference rules of voice leading are supported by robust evidence produced by the experimental method and by computer analysis, and both bottom-up and top-down aspects of voice leading are discussed. Huron provides scientific answers to the questions many people have regarding voice-leading rules, such as why parallel octaves and fifths should be avoided or why a tone should move to one proximate in pitch as opposed to a larger interval. Parallel octaves and fifths should be avoided, we learn, because they tend to fuse into one auditory image, which violates the voice-leading principle that different voices be kept separate. Similarly, a big leap of pitch in a melody line interferes with the tracing of auditory streams, so a step motion of tones is preferred to ensure the smooth parsing of musical lines. Huron stresses how these voice-leading rules help the listener to separate different lines of polyphonic music and perceive them as meaningful streams.
These chapters should be of particular interest to music teachers and students, demonstrating as they do that the conventional voice-leading rules were created on the foundation of our auditory ability to process sequences of tones. However, Huron specifies that this book is not intended to replace traditional pedagogy. After his own attempt at teaching these scientific rationales to undergraduate music students, he realized that such an attempt could confuse beginners (Afterword; Huron, 2006). Nevertheless, as Huron says, the perceptual accounts presented in this book will undoubtedly enlighten more advanced practitioners who study voice leading or write music. These perceptual and psychological rationales for voice-leading rules should help them better understand not only the voice-leading rules themselves, but also the way in which the listener perceives their compositions.
Chapters 13 and 14 are concerned with complex auditory scene analysis in music, such as the way we perceive chord sequences in music as one sonority or several concurrent, segregated sonorities and the way we perceive tune-and-accompaniment texture in music as one or two streams. These questions are considered in the light of empirical studies that employ musical examples as experimental stimuli, and various factors such as tempo, musical context, and the listener’s attention are discussed. After considering these questions, one of the most important ideas of this book is presented: the voice-leading rules ensure that musical lines are perceptually independent and coherent. Voice leading is thus a useful tool for a composer to create and control the musical texture or acoustic scene as he or she wishes. Chapter 15 explains how our perception of music is influenced and shaped by our cultural background. Huron emphasizes that our sound environment shapes how we perceive sound and music and the diversity and plasticity of auditory scene analysis.
Chapter 16, entitled “Ear Teasers,” turns its attention to aesthetic questions regarding voice leading. Huron considers the reward system and pleasure when discussing why a piece of music written in accordance with the conventional voice-leading rules sounds better because these rules reduce perceptual ambiguity and make parsing musical lines easier for the listener. When the brain is rewarded by successful auditory scene analysis—namely, a scene analysis that is mentally coherent and fulfills the listener’s expectations—pleasure is evoked in the listener. Huron further discusses how we feel more pleasure when we successfully solve perceptually more difficult scene analysis, such as a piece of music with more lines or more complex acoustics, because complexity is more rewarding. A complex musical texture or scene which the listener can nevertheless manage to parse and experience pleasure from is termed an “ear teaser” (p. 198). This relationship between the difficulty or complexity of the subject, on the one hand, and the listener’s emotional or aesthetic response, on the other, is similar to Wundt’s inverted-U theory (Berlyne, 1971). Ear teasers lie at the top of the inverted-U, which denotes the upper threshold of complexity that the listener can handle, and thus affords them maximum pleasure. The idea that voice leading contributes to the listener’s pleasure is unique and fascinating, and Huron’s holistic approach to auditory scene analysis and aesthetic responses to music presented in these later chapters provide much food for thought for music psychologists.
This very readable and informative book is, to my knowledge, one of the first to examine the conventional rules of voice leading from the perspective of psychoacoustics and music cognition. The writing style is informal, avoiding jargon, and many useful and sometimes humorous metaphors are employed to explain perceptual phenomena regarding voice-leading and auditory scene analysis. This book would serve not only as a great introduction to music perception and auditory scene analysis for music students or naïve readers but also as a useful reference and a source of inspiration for researchers in the field of music cognition. While the main focus of this book is one specific area of Western music theory, voice leading, the argument presented here is not limited in its applicability to Baroque music or even to Western classical music in general but has much wider relevance.
