How the human mind structures its complex environment is a topic that has been explored for generations by individuals from a wide variety of disciplines. Musicians now seem to be generally aware that pattern perception is highly relevant to their interests. In fact, much of the most insightful, current research into musical problems involves some aspect of human pattern perception. Certainly there is an enormous amount of empirical evidence that we structure our environment by finding patterns in what we see and hear. Subsequently, a great deal of literature supports the hypothesis that our perception of sounds which we call music begins with organization of these sounds into temporal and pitch/sound patterns. Insights from this literature, then, provide a step toward verification of assertions which musicians make about what they hear in a musical composition. There is a need, then, to review this literature which is rich with implications for teaching aural and analytical skills and, subsequently, for musical performance. The rather lengthy bibliography which follows suggests the enormous range of studies related to music, the diversity of which is a stimulating challenge to music educators who wish to broaden their bases of inquiry into musical problems. The list, while I would not claim it to be comprehensive, is up-to-date and representative.

To summarize studies on patterning, it is necessary to touch on a wide range of human knowledge, and to begin as early as the evolutionary growth of life itself. Further, the study of human pattern perception involves observation of behavior from many different perspectives: in the physical sciences, there is acoustics, physics, chemistry, biology, and their behavioral concomitants, psycho-acoustics and psycho-physics; in the social sciences and humanities, there is psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and the arts. This scanning of disciplines includes so-called subjective-intuitive reports, ostensibly objective-scientific studies, and all of the gray area in between. Having acknowledged the tenacious art-versus-science polarization, let me suggest that such a division is by no means precise, real, or even necessary. Esthetic or intuitive judgments contain aspects that can be measured rather precisely. Scientific or empirical studies measuring human responses are by no means completely objective. Further, this polarization is unreal since quantification techniques have been introduced in nearly all formerly humanistic fields, especially philosophy, history, linguistics, and the arts. So the topic of human pattern perception is of necessity an interdisciplinary one, and, in this varied milieu, a "fusion of emotion and intellect" furnishes a balanced perspective.

My method for discussing musical pattern perception will be to summarize evidence for three hypotheses: first, that patterning is inherent in general human behavior; second, that we structure aural stimuli by patterning; third, that we respond to sounds called music at the same basic level of patterning that occurs in other life processes.

 

PATTERNING IN GENERAL HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The consistency of results which emerge from experiments on perception in many different fields is amazing. The body of empirical evidence about aural perception is strikingly redundant in its insistence on the need for and perception of structure as part of human mental processes. The fundamental tenet which runs like a thread through the literature is the basic human tendency to structure stimuli in the environment into patterns.

The pattern-forming process of the mind dates back at least to the explosive evolutionary progress of the brain in the last two million years. Consider the millions of nerve pulses which are carried to the brain in any one instant and the gigantic sorting process (structuring) which must take place in order to bring some kind of order to the chaos. Studies of animals at various evolutionary levels indicate that responses to aural patterns take place as a guide to adjustment to environmental changes, particularly related to sex and self-preservation instincts.1 The sorting process is manifest in the behavior of the organism which then learns whether the response has positive or negative results and thus at the next juncture selects the appropriate response. For example

frogs do not react at all to musical tones, but they give biologically serviceable responses to certain complex vibratory patterns. The splash by one frog jumping into water stimulates others to jump too . . . these patterns of vibration have important temporal aspects; they cannot be defined merely in terms of pitch, timbre and intensity at any one moment.2

This selective process of patterning goes back to the beginning of life itself, as Platt points out in his discussion of symmetry—that is, shape-pattern. Symmetry can be found at all levels of life from: ". . . single-cell animals, spores, blood cells" to the cylindrical symmetry of "equi-distant segments" of lower plants and animals such as the bamboo, worm, and legs of the millipede to the symmetry found at the "molecular level in long-chain protein and nucleic acid molecules, and higher up, in helical plant stems and spiral shells . . ."3 Platt concludes from his broad biological and anthropological perspective that "there is evidently a happy coincidence between many of the physiological symmetries imposed by evolution and the primitive pattern symmetries involved in perception."4

The patterning process seems to rest on two fundamental "neuropsychological principles"—needs, if you will: first, the need to find patterns of "same" or "repetition" and secondly, the need to find "different" or "unexpected" elements in the environment.5 These two categories are separated for purposes of clarity, but in experience they function as part of the same perceptual process. Perhaps it is only pointing out the obvious that our perception of stimuli results in the judgment that something is either old (repetitive, familiar) or new (novel, stimulating) or varied (mixture of old and new).

Time is the spectrum in which we relate experiences, as Doob discusses in his study on patterning of time: in the "psychological present," we experience the present, recollect the past and anticipate the future, a complex structuring process.6 At a basic level, the pattern-forming process of an individual is possibly merely a result of the ability to detect that a stimulus is the same or different.7 Doob's three-faceted time-patterning is related to Koffka's discussion of three related perceptual processes: (1) sensation (a direct and elemental response) (2) association (memory, the past) (3) attention: joining of the other elements resulting in discrimination.8 Meyer also alluded to the same process when he spoke of the listening experience as perception of a present pattern related to past experience and furnishing expectation for the future.9 In this way humans select from their environment and make choices, in order to relieve the anxiety of continuous uncertainty or chaos. Attneave, Garner, Hake, Paisley and others have established that persons seek first the most simple, economical, problem-free patterns to structure the environment in rewarding ways.10

Patterning is fundamental to life processes in regard to what is often called the rhythm of life. Perhaps "music, owing to its rhythmic and periodic nature, somehow harmonizes and synchronizes neuromuscular and organic processes generally."11 All human experience consists of highs and lows, frenzy and lethargy, tension and relaxation. The complimentary principles of surprise (unexpected stimuli) and repetition (expected stimuli) are analogous to the rhythms of life processes, where a balance of the predictable and unpredictable results in a stimulating yet structured life pattern.

Pattern perception becomes concrete in the behavior of individuals. Behavior is visible and can be studied, so observation and exploration of human behavior provides the most precise insight into the patterning process. Behavioral scrutiny has been systematized most thoroughly in the field of psychology. It follows that, while finding useful information from many disciplines, theories of pattern perception are built primarily on a psychological foundation. We will examine psychological insights about aural perception and then, specifically, musical perception.

 

AURAL PATTERN PERCEPTION

Musicians, of course, are interested primarily in aural pattern perception, that is, the perception of sounds. When individuals respond to and measure sounds in the environment, the results are often quite different from machines measuring acoustically the same sound. Machines simply record, while humans discriminate and evaluate. Sounds are modified by our perception of the sounds. Cobb pointed out that after sounds have been mechanically (physically) generated, our hearing mechanism receives them, structures them, embraces parts, rejects others, so that a reproduction by humans of the sounds originally generated may or may not resemble the original.12 For example, persons organize series of equidistant, uniform sounds (metronome clicks) into patterns. Further, the relative vividness of the clicks is affected by perception. And when a person taps successive beats, the tendency is for the beats to vary in intensity and cease to be equidistant.13 Human beings seem to have a strong inclination to impose patterns on random auditory stimuli (noise). Simon and Sumner found that persons hear orderly sequences in random noises and tend to treat elements which do not fit their imposed patterns as "exceptional."14

The Gestalt idea that a listener responds to a stimulus as a whole has been consistently supported in a wide variety of experiments. In fact, it appears that we have difficulty forming patterns without hearing the whole. A study by von Hornbostel is illuminating: "Various distortions were introduced into the partials of the vowels and consonants, S, T, I, and L, so that they became quite unrecognizable; and yet when the same distortions were applied to the word STIL, it remained recognizable."15 It is a fundamental principle of Gestalt psychology that "a knowledge of the parts is insufficient for prediction of the phenomenal properties of the whole."16 Music is a particularly obvious case of "the whole being more than the sum of the parts."17 It has long been realized, notes Vernon, "that a melody is determined, not by its separate component notes, but by the pitch and temporal relations between the notes . . . just as the shape of a profile is more important to the eye than the single black dots into which it may be analyzed."18 Vernon's listeners could say little about an isolated chord which was played for them, but they were able to identify it within a group of chords.

Royer and Garner found further evidence that the Gestalt description of perception has validity. In a nine-element sequence, their listeners responded more significantly to the repetition of the total group than to individual elements in the group. Two perceptually good patterns, that is, the pattern built in and its reversal were preferred over the first pattern with one element changed, a choice made only if the listener heard the pattern as a whole.19

The Gestalt figure-ground concept further illuminates human pattern perception. Sounds possess figure-ground properties. Figure or "exciting" properties are "high frequency, large amplitude, many higher partials, rapidity of change . . . the 'brightness' attribute of sounds."20 As in visual perception, where space is part of the perceived structure, namely the ground, so in aural perception, tests or silence apparently become the ground, against which a listener awaits a noise or figure. A ground may be still or noisy, but it has more of the character of a substance while the figure has more of a thing character.21

Discrepancy between acoustically-measured sounds and human perception of sounds is particularly evident in the matter of duration. Even a steady tone sustained at a barely audible level comes and goes in a periodic fluctuation of about ten seconds. Here the pattern of fluctuation is imposed by the listener. Bekesy describes this as "nervous inhibition," a phenomenon which attends the transmission of sensation.22

The apparent difference of intensity between two sounds which differ only in duration is a patterning phenomenon of considerable interest. Individuals tend to hear a longer sound as accented and also tend, when reproducing sound patterns, to accent the beginning of groups by hearing the interval before a durational accent as ending a group. After a certain point, however, an increase in relative duration causes the listener to hear the longer sound as ending a group.23

When a person can detect periodicity in a group of sounds (repetition of a group or part of a group), pattern is established.24 Pattern is not simply repetition but one kind of regular alteration of repetition and change. Expectations are aroused as a result of patterns. Good continuation (Meyer's phrase) is the result of the right balance, in the listener's opinion, of predictability and surprise. Further, there is immediate repetition and there is return, which is repetition after a period of delay. Different levels of repetition form patterns on various levels simultaneously.

 

MUSICAL PATTERNS

The human brain, then, is an organ of pattern processing which structures the environment, at a most basic level, with discrimination between same and different. Fundamentally, musicians are concerned with how sounds are perceived as music. Platt's provocative thesis is that musical pattern perception is the same patterning process as biological selection, occurring at a different level of complexity.

It now appears that the requirements for aesthetic enjoyment are simply the requirements for perception itself, raised to a higher degree; and the essential thing in each case is to have a pattern [same] that contains the unexpected [different.] This seems to be the heart of what we call beautiful, and it is no exaggeration to say that men need it as they need food.25

The notion that the "unexpected" provides the important element of value is an intuitive assertion, and perhaps a logical one. A pattern arouses expectation for its good continuation which means a certain amount of repetition and a certain amount of surprise, providing a satisfying balance.

This aspect of perception assumes attentive listening. Vernon categorized two kinds of listening: definite and indefinite, by which he meant either paying attention or just allowing sounds to intrude vaguely in the background. In visual perception, certain features in a total field stand out from a more indefinite background. "Definite listening is equivalent to the perception of figures, indefinite listening is a general response to the ground, en masse."26

A same-different judgment is dependent on definite listening to a succession of sounds and silences which we organize into groups. This organization into groups takes place after a statement of a musical idea (usually consisting of durationally-organized pitches) which is the original element in a series. Somewhere in the time span after the original element in a series (depending on the amount of information in the first statement), expectations are set up.27 The relationship between the original and the following series will take any number of forms: a series "reproduces, continues, completes, reflects, or develops the original."28 This relationship was investigated more precisely by White, who used distorted melodies to measure pattern recognition ability. Taking familiar folk melodies such as "On Top of Old Smoky," "Yankee Doodle," and "Bicycle Built for Two," he transformed them in various fashions; transposition, retrograde, altering interval size, and by maintaining the set of intervals found in the original melody, but changing their temporal sequence. He found that simple transposition of the tune had little or no effect on recognition. Techniques which impaired recognizability least were those which left intervals their original size or left the sequence of ups and downs unchanged. The retrograde version of tunes greatly disturbed recognition. One of White's main conclusions was that "Those transformations are the least disruptive which preserve the relative magnitudes of the intervals between successive notes and do not change the temporal sequence."29

We perceive sounds as music, in part, by the relative highness and lowness of pitches (contour). Ortmann discussed the psychological status of individual tones, concluding that the highest and lowest tones of a motive are prominent in perception, and that the final tone is retained better than the others.30 A single tone influences perception of the whole, but does not impair recognition. Guilford and Hilton found that when only one tone is altered in a repeated melody, several tones sound altered. An "altered tone seemed to raise or lower the whole melody."31 These studies and others indicate that pitch or contour is a readily-patterned element of music.32 The contour furnishes a good gestalt. Altering intervals undermines recognition of a previous melodic pattern unless the general contour (the good gestalt) is retained.

The temporal-motion aspect of music, however, cannot logically be separated from the total gestalt. Cooper and Meyer noted that a motive is "marked for consciousness" also by its pattern of accent.33 A motor theory of response, or some kind of kinesthetic reaction to musical movement is so consistently evident that it is an important part of any theory of human response to musical patterns. Roger Sessions maintained that even sound, itself, is second to movement. He believes that "music is significant for us as human beings principally because it embodies movement of a specifically human type that goes to the roots of our being and takes shape in the inner gestures which embody our deepest and most intimate responses."34

Vernon observed the wide diversity of kinesthetic responses in different parts of the body in his own listeners as well as those of Lee and Weld. The body registers responses to "pitch motions of the chief musical figures, to changes in the intensity and rapidity of the music, to simple, and especially to complex, rhythms." He also noticed "a rough correlation between the muscle groups which are predominantly employed in musical perception and reproduction, and those which have been trained for performance at a musical instrument."35 Vernon opts for a motor theory of perception combined with certain gestalt principles. In his theory, "figure perception depends on the development of a discriminative reaction to a 'good gestalt', the same response being then evoked when the figure recurs as a 'poor gestalt'."36

If we organize sounds into the most simple and problem-free form, by finding a good gestalt, this, in musical terms, is identification of a rhythmic or melodic motive. The necessary conditions for retaining identification of a motivic pattern are a sufficient number of consistent durational patterns and basic contours. Changes of pitch (from a fourth to a fifth or second to third) are not heard as disruptive changes, if the durational information and general contour remain the same.

Musical pattern perception also takes the form of finding unity within diversity, the most obvious structural scheme being that of theme and variations. The unifying aspect of tonality in tonal music, with its hierarchy of harmonic relationships, probably furnishes the catalyst for all the other musical elements. In La Rue's words,

the sense of unification which the ear recognizes as tonality results not so much from how many times we hear the central chords such as tonic and dominant, but more from how they occur, the emphasis that they receive from rhythmic stress, melodic climax, strategic position with reference to articulations and other sources of weight. Hence, it may even be possible to show that tonality is not merely a harmonic phenomenon—perhaps not even mainly a harmonic phenomenon—but rather a symptom of increased general control over musical elements, resulting from greater coordination in matters such as climax and articulation.37

While tonality obviously plays a significant unifying role, less obvious is how a complete work, lacking a conventional tonal center, contains a unity which is "felt" more than it is aurally or even visually apparent. Walker was intrigued by the seeming unity of "contrasting" themes within a particular composition, and asked the question "Why that particular transition or that particular second subject?" Pattern perception, he concluded, takes place at more than one level of consciousness.38 An unconscious or background unity (Ehrenzweig, 1953)39 was his explanation for the ability of his listeners to relate a twelve-tone mirror form to its original in a Schoenberg composition. Already in the 1890s, Warthin reported that when his hypnotized listeners were instructed to pay attention to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," their pulses rose in some cases from 60 to 120 per minute and they began to perspire freely.40 Under hypnosis, these responses were apparently subconscious.

Walker experimented further with a group of specially-composed contrasting themes, two of which sprang from the same musical background. The majority of listeners related the two themes despite lack of surface similarities.41 The results of Walker's experiments seemed to suggest a kind of pattern perception in the realm of the intuitive rather than the aurally objective. Intuitive responses, in addition to providing emotional insights, are often significant because they reflect commonfelt experiences. Also they are potentially useful as hypotheses for further investigation.

Pattern perception at several levels of consciousness helps to explain why a minor variation in a good gestalt registers on the surface as simple repetition. A variation perceived inarticulately at one level may be perceived more fully at another level. Or a small change in a pattern is perceived as the original pattern, with the variation heard only partially as it actually occurred. La Rue gives an example of this "fortunate elasticity of human perception": "a pattern of 4 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 4 bars may often be perceived as regular four-bar modules, despite the inequalities."42 That is, the four-bar modules which occur most frequently are retained as the reference pattern, while perceiving the varied versions. Another example of multi-level perception was noted by Mainwaring, who observed that "the effect of pulse is that of a continuously recurring regularity which is felt rather than heard; a rhythmic figure is heard and recalled as a patterned unity complete in itself."43

Ehrenzweig would say that a listener selects the good gestalt aspects while other elements may be passed over and register only as "effect," perhaps in the subconscious. He makes an analogy with one's perception of foreign languages, especially very unfamiliar ones. To a Westerner, non-Western languages often sound like so many gasps and hisses because "we miss the sonority of that language owing to our inability to articulate it by the proper selection of articulate sounds and the corresponding repression of the rest as . . . inarticulate sounds." This phenomenon seems to occur in our perception of unfamiliar or exotic music as well. Here the listener's reaction is analogous to that of a joke, where the familiar-in-the-unfamiliar causes laughter. The listener

will automatically try to apply his usual articulation of a melody into definite scale tones and rhythmical beats. . . . As this is not possible, the mental energy held ready for the effort of surface articulation (perception) becomes useless and is shifted into the depth mind which spends it in laughter.44

In familiar style, however, the surface-versus-depth perception works differently. Ehrenzweig believed that aurally-obscure developmental techniques such as retrograde and inversion are perceived as related in the "depth-mind," even though the surface perception does not always pick up the relationship. As noted above, Walker attempted to test this assertion using Schoenberg's compositions, with the result that his listeners did perceive thematic relationships between an original theme and its mirror form.

In summary, the evidence from these varied perspectives suggests that a listener perceives sounds as music by selecting a pattern to which he gives consistent attention, especially in a style in which he can predict the development to some extent. The need for, and the subsequent recognition of, pattern generates expectations as to what course the music will follow. This expectation is accompanied by an anticipatory tension which builds with the momentum of the music and is released as the music reaches its goal or follows the course which was expected. A different kind of satisfaction ensues if the music deviates from one's expectations or if the consequent is delayed. There is an aesthetic response in either case, because in the latter event, the deviation is related in some important way to what the entirely expected or banal consequent might have been. Recognition of same-different sounds (that is, pattern) satisfies the fundamental need to order the universe in some way, to predict the course of events, and thereby assert a measure of control over the environment.



SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Philosophical and General Writings

Berlyne, D.E. Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Menton, Balch & Co., 1934.

Keil, Charles M.H. Motion and feeling through music. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24, Spring, 1966, 337-349.

Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor Books, 1951.

Leichtentritt, Hugo. Aesthetic ideas as the basis of musical styles. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 4(2), December, 1945, 65-73.

Lunney, H.W. Time as heard in speech and music. Nature, 249, June, 1974, 592.

Osgood, C.E. and Percy H. Tannenbaum. The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957.

Pike, Alfred. The theory of unconscious perception in music: A phenomenological criticism. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 25(4), Summer, 1967, 395-400.

Pratt, Carrol C. The Meaning of Music (A study in psychological aesthetics). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1931.

Reichenbach, Hans. Gestalt psychology and form in music. Journal of Musicology, 2, No. 2, 1940, 62-71.

_________. The Rise of Scientific Philosophy. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951 (1966).

Sayre, Kenneth M. Recognition: A Study in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. University of Notre Dame Press, 1965.

Schoen, Max. The experience of beauty in music. Musical Quarterly, 17, 1931, 93-109.

 

Science and the Arts

Birkhoff, George. Aesthetic Measure. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933.

Burns, Ayleen H. An updated review of literature pertaining to information theory and music. Unpublished paper, Ohio State University Information Retrieval Center, 17 pp., 1971.

Caws, Peter. Science and the Theory of Value. New York: Random House, 1967.

Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. Mouton, s'-Gravenhage, The Netherlands, 1957.

Clifton, Thomas. Some comparisons between intuitive and scientific descriptions of music. Journal of Music Theory, 19/1, Spring, 1975, 66-110.

Cohen, A.J., P. Issacs, S. Flores, D. Harrison and J. Bradley. The Computer as Interdisciplinary Catalyst: Music and Psychology. In: S. Lucignan and J. North. Computing in the Humanities (University of Waterloo Press). Dist. by U. of Edinburgh Press, 1977.

Cohen, Joel E. Information theory and music. Behavioral Science, 7, 1962, 137-163.

Harwood, D.L. Music as a branch of cognitive psychology. In Theory Only, 1975, I/5, 9-17.

Koehler, Wolfgang. The Place of Value in a World of Facts. (Lectures delivered in 1938.) New York: The New American Library (A Mentor Book), 1966.

Lawson, Robert F. Scientific approaches to problems of aural perceptivity in music. Michigan Academician, 3(1), Summer, 1970, 7-18.

Meyer, Leonard B. Meaning in music and information theory. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 15, 1957, 412-424.

Moles, Abraham A. Information Theory and Esthetic Perception. tr. Joel E. Cohen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966.

_________. Some basic aspects of information theory of music. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 6, 1958, 183.

Redfield, John. Music: A Science and an Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941.

Seashore, Carl E. A base for the approach to quantitative studies in the aesthetics of music. American Journal of Psychology, 39, 1927, 141-144.

 

Psychology of Perception

Allport, Floyd H. Theories of Perception. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1955.

Attneave, Fred. Applications of Information Theory to Psychology. A summary of basic concepts, methods and results. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1959.

Broadbent, D.E. Perception and Communication. New York: Pergamon Press, 1958.

Day, R.H. Perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 15, 1964, 1-28.

Didwell, Peter C. (ed.) Perceptual Processing: stimulus equivalence and pattern recognition. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Educational Division, Meredity Corporation, 1971.

Gibson, James J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

Koffka, Kurt. Perception: an introduction to the Gestalt-Theorie. Psychological Bulletin, 19, October, 1922, 31-81.

Mendel, Jerry M. and K.S. Fu (eds.) Adaptive Learning and Pattern Recognition Systems. New York: Academic Press, 1970.

Piaget, Jean. The Mechanisms of Perception (tr. G.N. Seagrim) Orig. 1961. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1969.

Tolkmitt, Frank J. Auditory pattern perception: Processing limits and organizational tendencies. Ph.D. dissertation, Kansas State University, 1969.

Watanabe, Satosi (ed.) Methodologies of Pattern Recognition. New York: Academic Press, 1969.

Young, Tzay Y. and Thomas W. Calvert. Classification, Estimation and Pattern Recognition. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company Incorporated, 1974.

 

General Studies by Musicians

Albersheim, Gerhard. On the psychology of music. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, IV/2, 1973, 213-226.

Alden, Edgar H. The role of the motive in musical structure. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1956.

Babbitt, Milton. The synthesis, perception, and specification of musical time. Journal of the International Folk Music Council, 16, 1964, 92.

Butler, David. An historical investigation and bibliography of 19th century music psychology literature. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1973.

Cazden, Norman. The systemic reference of musical consonance response. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, III/2, 1972, 217-234.

De Arce, Daniel M. Contemporary sociological theories and the sociology of music. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, V/2, 1974, 231-250.

Faulds, Bruce D. The perception of pitch in music. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1960.

Fay, Thomas. Perceived hierarchic structure in language and music. Journal of Music Theory, 15/1, 2, 1971, 112-137.

_________. Context analysis of musical gestures. Journal of Music Theory, 18/1, Spring, 1974, 124-151.

Fraisse, P.I. Les structures rhythmiques (Paris, 1956). Erasme II. Psychologie due temps, Paris 1957, P.U.F.

Friedham, Philip. The relationship between tonality and musical structure. Music Review, 37, 1976, 44-53.

Gordon, Edwin. Bibliography: 1937-1970: A selected bibliography of experimental research studies in the psychology of music from 1937-1970. Experimental research in the Psychology of Music, 7. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 168-179.

Hantz, Edwin Charlton. Music and Memory: verification procedures for a psychology of music. Unpublished paper presented at meetings of Michigan Music Theory Society, March, 1977, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Hindemith, Paul. Craft of musical composition. I. Theory. rev. ed. New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1945.

Kneif, Tibur. Some non-communicative aspects in music. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, V/1, 1974, 51-58.

Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Nelson, Robert U. The Technique of Variation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948.

Pallett, Earl Marshall. Music communication research: The connotative dimensions of music meaning. Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1967.

Poland, William. Theories of music and musical behavior. Journal of Music Theory, 7/2, Winter, 1963, 150-173.

Reti, Rudolph. The Thematic Process in Music. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951.

Roederer, J.G. The psychophysics of musical perception. Music Educators Journal, 60, February, 1974, 20-30.

Salzer, Felix. Structural Hearing: tonal coherence in music, 2 volumes. New York: Charles Boni, 1952.

Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea (edited by Dika Newlin). New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.

Sessions, Roger. The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.

Supicic, Ivo. Expression and meaning in music. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, II/2, 1971, 193-211.

Toch, Ernst. The Shaping Forces in Music. New York: Criterion Music Corporation, 1958.

Walton, Kendall L. The presentation and portrayal of sound patterns. In Theory Only, 1977, 2/11, 3-16.

 

Auditory Perception Studies

Aaronson, Roberta. Perception and immediate recall of auditory sequences. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1966.

Allen, A.H.B. A psychological theory of aesthetic value. British Journal of Psychology, 28, 1937, 43-58.

Attneave, Fred. Some informational aspects of visual perception. Psychological Review, 61, 1954, 183-193.

_________. Symmetry, information, and memory for patterns. American Journal of Psychology, 68, 1955, 209-222.

Barlett, D.L. Effect of repeated listenings on structural and affective response. Journal of Research in Music Education, 21, 1973, 302-317.

Black, J.W. The magnitude of pitch inflection. Archives di Psicologia, Neurologia e Psichiatria, 30(1), January, 1969, 5-16.

Broadbent, D.E. Applications of information theory and decision theory to human perception and reaction. In Norman R. Haber (ed.) Contemporary Theory and Research in Visual Perception. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Burroughs, G.E. and J.N. Morris. Factors involved in learning a simple musical theme. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 32(1), 18-28.

Carlsen, James. Developing aural perception of music in context. Journal of Research in Music Education, 17(1), 1969, 47-50.

Carlsen, James C., Pierre Idvenyi and Jack A. Taylor. A preliminary study of perceptual expectancy in melodic configurations. Council for Research in Music Education, Bulletin No. 22, Fall, 1970.

Chenoweth, V. Melodic perception and analysis. (Summer Institute of Linguistics) Australian Journal of Music Education, 13:51-2, October, 1973.

Colwell, Richard. The theory of expectation applied to musical listening. Cooperative Research Project No. H-106. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1966.

Cuddy, Lola L. and Annabel J. Cohen. Recognition of transposed melodic sequences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 1976, 255-270.

Divenyi, Pierre L. The rhythmic perception of micro-melodies: Detectability by human observers of a time increment between sinusoidal pulses of the two different successive frequencies. University of Washington dissertation. Dissertation Abstracts International, 31, 1971, 4358-4359.

Dowling, W.J. Recognition of inversions of melodies and melodic contours. Perception and Psychophysics, 9(3B), 1971, 348-349.

_________. Recognition of melodic transformations: Inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion. Perception and Psychophysics, 12(5), 1972, 417-421.

Dowling, W.J. and Diane S. Fujitani. Contour, interval, and pitch recognition in memory for melodies. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49(2).

Ellis, Douglas S. and Gilbert Brighouse. Effects of music on respiration- and heart-rate. American Journal of Psychology, 65(1), 1952, 39-47.

Frances, F. Researches experimentals sur la perception des structures musicales. J. de Psychol., 1952, 78-96.

Friedman, Stanley S. One aspect of the structure of music. Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association, 8, 1960, 427-449.

Garner, W.R. and R.L. Gottwald. The perception and learning of temporal patterns. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 20, 1968, 97-109.

Goldenstein, M.H., S. Kiang, and R.H. Brown. Response of the auditory cortex to repetitive stimuli. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31, March, 1959, 356-394.

Guilford, J.P. and H.M. Nelson. Changes in the pitches of tones when melodies are repeated. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 19, 1936, 193-202.

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1P.E. Vernon, "Auditory perception. II. The evolutionary approach," British Journal of Psychology, 25, January, 1935, p. 268.

2Vernon, "Auditory perception." II, pp. 267, 268.

3J.R. Platt, "Beauty, pattern and change," pp. 82-107 in Perception and Change: Projections for Survival (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), p. 97.

4Platt, "Beauty," p. 98.

5Platt, "Beauty," p. 83; Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1956.

6Leonard W. Doob, Patterning of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 13.

7H.A. Simon and K. Kotovsky, "Human acquisition of concepts for sequential patterns," Psychological Review, 70, 1963, pp. 534-546.

8Kurt Koffka, "Perception: an introduction to the Gestalt-Theorie," Psychological Bulletin, 19, October, 1922, pp. 553-570.

9Meyer, Emotion and Meaning.

10Fred Attneave, "Some informational aspects of visual perception," Psychological Review, 61, 1954, pp. 183-193.

Wendell R. Garner, Uncertainty and Structure as Psychological Concepts (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962).

H.W. Hake, "Contributions of Psychology to the study of pattern vision," USAF WADC Technical Report, No. 57-621, 1957.

W.J. Paisley, "Identifying the unknown communicator in painting, literature and music: The significance of minor encoding habits," Journal of Communication, 14, 1964, pp. 219-237.

11Vernon, "Auditory Perception." II, p. 273.

12G.F. Cobb, "On certain principles of musical exposition considered educationally and with special reference to current systems of musical theory," Part 1. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 10th Session, 1883-1884, pp. 125, 126.

Also see W. Poland, "The perception of sound as music," Paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 1971.

13R.B. Stetson, "A motor theory of rhythm and discrete succession," Psychological Review, 12, 1905, pp. 250-270; 293-350.

14H.A. Simon and R.K. Sumner, "Pattern in music," Unpublished paper (Carnegie Institute of Technology: Complex Information Processing Paper # 104, 1967), p. 3.

15E.M. von Hornbostel, "Psychologies der Gehorerscheinungen," Bethe's Handbuch der Normalen und pathologischen Physiologie, XI, pp. 701-730. (Berlin: Springer, 1926) Quoted in P.E. Vernon, "Auditory perception. I. The Gestalt approach," British Journal of Psychology, 25, October, 1934, p. 126.

16Vernon, I, p. 125.

17P.E. Vernon, "Method in musical psychology," in section Notes and Discussions of American Journal of Psychology, 42, January, 1930, p. 128.

18Vernon, I, p. 124.

19Fred L. Royer and Wendell R. Garner, "Perceptual organization of nine-element auditory temporal patterns," Perception and Psychophysics, 7(2), 1970, pp. 115-120.

20Vernon, II, p. 269.

21Koffka, Perception, pp. 554-558.

22Reported by Merle Lawrence in "Audition," Annual Review of Psychology, 19, 1968, pp. 1-26.

23H. Woodrow, "A quantitative study of rhythm," Archives of Psychology, 14, 1909, p. 65.

24Simon and Kotovsky, 1963, p. 540.

25Platt, "Beauty," p. 83.

26Vernon, I, p. 131.

27H.P. Weld, "An experimental study of musical enjoyment," American Journal of Psychology, 23, 1912, pp. 245-308. The idea of "expectation" was then developed in detail by Meyer and adopted by Platt.

28George Dickinson, "Analogical relations in musical pattern," Journal of the American Musicological Society, 13, 1960, p. 262.

29Benjamin W. White, "Recognition of distorted melodies," American Journal of Psychology, 73, 1960, pp. 105-107.

30Otto Ortman, "On the melodic relativity of tones," Psychological Monographs, 35, 1926, p. 39.

31J.P. Guilford and R.A. Hilton, "Some configurational properties of short musical melodies," Journal of Experimental Psychology, 16, 1933, p. 33.

32G.E. Burroughs and J.N. Morris, "Factors involved in learning a simple musical theme," British Journal of Educational Psychology, 32(1), 1962, pp. 18-28.

Phillip J. Chamberlain, "Pitch and duration in recognition of music-like structures," Perceptual and Motor Skills, 38(2), April, 1974, pp. 419-428.

Stephen Handel, "Perceiving melodic and rhythmic auditory patterns," Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103(5) November, 1974, pp. 922-933.

33Grosvenor W. Cooper and Leonard B. Meyer, The Rhythmic Structure of Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 8.

34Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, and Listener (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 19.

35Vernon, II, p. 275.

36Vernon, II, p. 281.

37Jan La Rue, Guidelines for Style Analysis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), p. 203.

38Alan Walker, A Study in Musical Analysis (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1962; N.Y.: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp. 9-23.

39Anton Ehrenzweig, The Psycho-analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing (London: Routledge and Kagan Paul, 1953.)

40A.S. Warthin, "Some physiological effects of music on hypnotized subjects," Medical News, 65, 1894, pp. 89-94. Reported by David Butler, An Historical Investigation and Bibliography of Nineteenth Century Music Psychology Literature (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1973), p. 349.

41Walker, Musical Analysis, pp. 142, 143.

42La Rue, Guidelines, p. 135.

43James Mainwaring, "Psychological factors in the teaching of music," British Journal of Educational Psychology, 21 (1951), p. 112.

44Ehrenzweig, Psycho-analysis, p. 105.

4784 Last modified on November 9, 2018