Psychology of Music

It is paradoxical that although there is general agreemenrt that imlusici pitc1b perception is much more accurate when the listener is givetn a tonal cOl1tt for the stimulus, leading perceptual theories disagree in their definitiois o tonal context itself. Nearly all cognitive theories of so-called pitch istruct Li-., in music assume that relations among acoustical components of sound. or mathematical groups, or geometrical constructs, can serve as adequate bases on which rules of musical composition and comprehension of pitch relationl- ships may be formulated. These theories have an obvious intellectual iippecai but do not describe the temporal structure of pitch relations in actual music, and thus fail to account for significant differences in the compositiona treatment of pitch from one style period, or one culture, to another. I hc perceptual theory of event hierarchies, advanced most notably by Bharucha attempts to describe the perception of pitch relationships in musical timtc and thus is an important exception to the rule that perceptual theories oi musical pitch deal solely in timeless abstractions. The event-hierarchhx theory holds that as musical events (tones, chords) unfold in a specitic composition, they are interpreted hierarchically by the listener; this cxvent hierarchy activates in the listener a tonal hierarchy, a hierarchy of ccivt classes. The two hierarchies are thought to be perceptually co-generativec symbiotic partners in what Deutsch (1984) calls an "elaborate bootstrapping operation". No adequate description yet exists of this bootstrapping opera tion, in which relatively stable and unstable members of a totial hierarchx are said to generate a piece-specific event hierarchy as the event hicrarchx defines the tonal hierarchy. Beyond the critical chicken-egg character of such a theory, there is the likelihood that the theory is far more comuplex than the cognitive act it is supposed to describe. An inspection of represen- tative samples of Western tonal and post-tonal music shows that stvic- dependent differences exist in the time orders of intervals that occtur onlv rarely in the diatonic set. The paper includes the first report of the results of an experiment using temporal organising schemes extracted from actual tonal and post-tonal compositions. These results indicate that aural context conveyed by temporal collocation of rare intervals may be as influenti'il as pitch content is in eliciting a sense of tonal structure in the musical listener. and further that temporal organisation of rare intervals mav provide perceptual cues for metrical organisation in tonal music.

Eighteen musicians and 18 non-musicians were asked to indicate perceived segmentations in a performance of Berio's Sequenza VI. Segmentations were marked during active listening by depressing a key oil a compLitCie console. The segmentations of both musicians and non-musicians were i general agreement with a reference analysis pi-ovided bv two compposers. These segmentations had a high degree of stability over two 1istenings. J'he results are discussed in terms of a theory of cue extraction allowing identification of the beginning and end of major compositioned units

This experiment, based on the work of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), was designed to test the abstraction of two forms of underlying structures: "reduced structure" and "prolongational structure". A family of four melodies (al,bl,cl,dl) with the same underlying structure but with different rhythmic-melodic organisations was presented to subjects twice in the first step of the experiment. In the second step of the experiment, these melodies were then interspersed with four analogous melodies (a2,b2,c2,d2) differing in their underlying structure. Listeners had to identify melodies belonging to the first family. By presenting either a real family (al,bl,cl,dl) or a false family (al,b2,cl,d2), the subject's success in abstracting underlying structures could be observed. Results indicate that this abstraction does occur for the two forms of underlying structure studied, and that it is performed by non-musicians as well as musicians. This experiment thus reveals a highly elaborate processing of musical phrases thoroughly consistent with the Lerdahl and Jackendoff model.

A group of experiments is described concerning production alnd tmc perception of melodic musical intervals by musicians. In some of tht experiments subjects tuned variable-tone oscillators to produce best soundino intervals without or within a tonal context. The presence of the context was effective both in changing the mean values of tuned intervals and in diminishing the dispersion of adjustments. The measure of dispersion in) tuning an isolated interval was correlated with the difficulty of recognising that interval by music students. In other experiments two experienced violinists playcd short ielo(iic sequences and the sizes of intervals were measured. The results arc In agreement with previous findings and allow us to draw turthet coniclusioens. A perspective on melodic intonation is suggested in which factors oP acoustic, psychological and musical origin are considered. Attentioni is drawn to the similarity between the production of intonaition variants of musical intervals and phonetic variants in natural language

Despite evidence that piano teachers recognise the importance of psycho- logical and emotional factors in the piano lesson, there is very little research or discussion about these factors in the profession. The conventional style of piano lesson is highly teacher-directed, the pupil being seen as a subordinate, dependent learner. This study drew on developments within the psychology of education on pupil-directed learning, on negotiated learning and on the emotional aspects of education and found that the lesson style of four pupils of secondary school age was easily adaptable to allow for the heightened awareness of psychological and emotional factors. This resulted in increased enjoyment, interest, positive attitudes, motivation and progress for three pupils, and in a better teacher-pupil relationship for all four pupils.

"All attempts to educate must fain be full of mistakes, and when one realises it is the growing child who suffers more than his teacher, it fills one with apprehension. But... if we face this fact with all humility and an ever- readiness to adjust, the child, sensing this empirical approach guides us himself, and the errors are less fatal, the co-operation of spirit more certain, and the joy of teaching a wonderful thing."

(Menuhin, 1969)

The purpose of this study was to determine the age at which children begin to recognise the affective qualities in sung and instrumentally-presented melodies. Four, seven, and nine-year-old children who had been pretested for comprehension of emotional concepts listened to melodies that had been rated by adults as either (1) happy, (2) sad, (3) angry, or (4) frightened- sounding. The melodies were presented in two modalities: soprano voice singing nonsense syllables, and viola. Overall volume levels were held constant, although many other features were varied. The data indicated that thete are age changes in this ability, that modality does in some instances play a role in emotional comprehension, and that some of the emotions are easier to interpret than others. There are also interaction effects among the factors.