E-Book Overview
In this book, David Temperley addresses a fundamental question about music cognition: how do we extract basic kinds of musical information, such as meter, phrase structure, counterpoint, pitch spelling, harmony, and key from music as we hear it? Taking a computational approach, Temperley develops models for generating these aspects of musical structure. The models he proposes are based on preference rules, which are criteria for evaluating a possible structural analysis of a piece of music. A preference rule system evaluates many possible interpretations and chooses the one that best satisfies the rules.After an introductory chapter, Temperley presents preference rule systems for generating six basic kinds of musical structure: meter, phrase structure, contrapuntal structure, harmony, and key, as well as pitch spelling (the labeling of pitch events with spellings such as A flat or G sharp). He suggests that preference rule systems not only show how musical structures are inferred, but also shed light on other aspects of music. He substantiates this claim with discussions of musical ambiguity, retrospective revision, expectation, and music outside the Western canon (rock and traditional African music). He proposes a framework for the description of musical styles based on preference rule systems and explores the relevance of preference rule systems to higher-level aspects of music, such as musical schemata, narrative and drama, and musical tension.
E-Book Content
The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures
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The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures
David Temperley
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
( 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Temperley, David. The cognition of basic musical structures / David Temperley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-20134-8 (hard : alk. paper) 1. Music theoryÐData processing. 2. Musical perceptionÐComputer simulation. I. Title. MT6.T35 C6 2001 781Ðdc21 00-054801
Contents
Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction 1 1.1 An Unanswered Question 1 1.2 Goals and Methodology 4 1.3 Music Cognition and Music Theory 1.4 The Input Representation 9 1.5 The Preference Rule Approach 13 1.6 The Implementation Strategy 14 I Six Preference Rule Systems 21
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Metrical Structure 23 2.1 Meter 23 2.2 Previous Research on Metrical Analysis 27 2.3 A Preference Rule System for Meter 30 2.4 Implementation 39 2.5 Tests 42 2.6 Problems and Possible Improvements 44 2.7 Other Factors in Metrical Structure 48 2.8 Choosing the Right Tactus 52 Melodic Phrase Structure 55 3.1 Musical Grouping and Phrase Structure 55 3.2 Studies of Musical Grouping in Psychology 56 3.3 Models of Grouping Structure 60
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3.4 A Preference Rule System for Melodic Phrase Structure 65 3.5 Implementation and Tests 71 3.6 Grouping in Polyphonic Music 76 Contrapuntal Structure 85 4.1 Counterpoint 85 4.2 Sequential Integration in Auditory Psychology 87 4.3 Computational Models of Contrapuntal Analysis 91 4.4 A Preference Rule System for Contrapuntal Analysis 96 4.5 Implementation 102 4.6 Tests 106 Pitch Spelling and the Tonal-Pitch-Class Representation 115 5.1 Pitch-Class, Harmony, and Key 115 5.2 Spatial Representations in Music Theory 116 5.3 Tonal-Pitch-Class Labeling 123 5.4 A Pr