High and low or big and small? Conceptualization of
musical relations in children
Mihailo Antović
Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia
BACKGROUND – Musical meaning?
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
Formal schools – music means only itself –
“progressions”, “antitheses”, “anticipations”.
Schenker, Meyer 1956, Bernstein 1976, Keiler
1977, Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983, 2006.
Contextual schools – music has connotations –
“emotions”, “rivers”, “lovers”, “images”. Cooke
1959, Langer 1966, Swain 1997.
Cognitive semantics – the dilemma is false! Both
these descriptions are metaphors emerging
from our conceptualization of the abstract
domain of music. Zbikowski 2002, Johnson and
Larson 2003, Spitzer 2004.
RESEARCH GOALS
When children conceptualize basic, diametrically
opposed musical relations:
1. Are their conceptualizations metaphorical?
2. Do they intuitively use standardized metaphors
from western music theory?
3. If not, can one still postulate a similar
underlying conceptualization system behind
their different responses?
(1) PITCH RELATIONS ARE HEIGHTS: low/high,
deep/shallow, deep/high, deep/shrill, medium/high,
lowered/elevated, lower/upper, normal/higher.
(2) PITCH RELATIONS ARE SIZES: small/big, medium/big,
thick/thin, short/long, low/big, small/high.
(3) PITCH RELATIONS ARE QUALITIES: happy/sad,
sad/joyful, better/worse, harsh/gentle, harsh/clean,
peaceful/gone wild.
(4) PITCH RELATIONS ARE FORCES: slow/fast, strong/weak,
strong/minute, loud/soft, loud/quiet.
(5) NO METAPHOR: don’t know, unclear.
Pitches: answer distribution (three strata)
90%
80%
70%
60%
Musician
Serb
Roma
50%
40%
30%
20%
p<.01
10%
0%
HEIGHT
FORCE
SIZE
QUALITY
no metaphor
PARTICIPANTS
10 stimuli pairs played to 90
randomly selected 11 year olds
30 Serbian, attending
elementary school of music
30 Roma (Gypsy), no formal
music education
30 Serbian, no formal music
education
Only required to answer what
the first and what the second
part of what they just heard
was like.
Scales: answer distribution (three strata)
100.00%
80.00%
CONCLUSIONS
Cognitive semantics (Lakoff & Johnson)
1.Musical conceptualization is predominantly metaphorical.
2. The metaphors are not haphazard (*PITCHES are APPLES).
They reflect relevant perceptual information and are often
based on the visual-spatial modality and embodied mind.
Conceptual semantics (Jackendoff)
3. Beyond the seemingly different mappings one could postulate a
more universal system.
4. These underlying similarities may justify a compositional
mechanism deeper than the ‘facile’ metaphor.
[Tone CHANGE OF STATE ([Down X], [Up Y])]
Musician
Serb
Roma
60.00%
40.00%
20.00%
0.00%
Typical conceptualizations are in line with standard
western music theory: motion, strength, distance.
No clear conceptualizations: *happy or sad majors
and minors, *music inducing emotions.
How to account for the differences between the
three groups of participants?
Underlying similarities : stimulus 1
- Fundamental dimensions, based on length
- Proportions
- Geometry, conceptualizing music as a visual domain
- Two tones are at the two ends of a spectrum
- Spectrum: space in which tones in a key are physically
stored
Underlying similarities: stimulus 2
- Again length, visual conceptualization
- The key (scale, tonality) is an axis
- Individual tones are points on the axis
- Music is motion directed along the axis (vertically,
horizontally, “teleologically” – towards a ‘goal’)
p<.01
VERT ICAL
HORIZONT AL
FORCES
no metaphor
[Tone CHANGE OF STATE ([Thick X], [Thin Y])]
[Tone CHANGE OF STATE ([Small X], [Big Y])]
5. Perhaps conceptualization of music can help reconcile
cognitive and conceptual semantics.