Music in the moment? revisiting the effect of large scale structures.
Submitted to CIM04, 28 0ctobre 2003
Philippe Lalitte
LEAD CNRS UMR 5022
phillal@club-internet.fr
Emmanuel Bigand
LEAD CNRS UMR 5022
bigand@u-bourgogne.fr
Cécile Alzina
LEAD CNRS UMR 5022
cecile_alzina@yahoo.com
Desired mode of presentation
talk
Background in music psychology
According to a strict concatenationist approach (Levinson, 1997), music is perceived
moment by moment, all structures being local and transient. Empirical research on
the perception of large scale structure provided support for a concatenationist
approach, and several authors have suggested that architectonic account of musical
structures expresses more the structure intended by composers than the structures
perceived by listeners (Cook, 1987). Several studies have investigated the
perception of global form by systematically manipulating the global organization of
musical pieces (Gotlieb & Konecni, 1985; Tillmann & Bigand, 1996). All confirmed the
weak sensitivity to global form. However, other studies (Deliège, 1989; Clarke &
Krumhansl, 1990) showed sensitivity to large scale structure in contemporary music.
Background in musicology
The concatenationist view conflics with the traditionnal concepts of form as
developped by music theorists (Schenker, 1935; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).
Organicist and architectonic concepts describes hierarchical structures inside a
musical phrase, between phrases of a musical piece, and between movements of a
whole piece. Other musicologists, such as Stoïanova (1978), distinguishes the kinetic
aspect of musical time and the static aspect. Kramer (1988) defends the idea that
linearity and non-linearity are the two fundamental means by which the music
structures time and time structures music.
Aims
The aim is to explore the sensitivity of participant to large scale structure, the
perception of musical coherence and the effect of temporal context.
Method
40 subjects participated in this experiment. Six musical pieces, half from
contemporary music, half from actual popular music were segmented in 28 or 29
chunks of 6 seconds on average. In the scrambled version, the temporal order of
these chunks was altered with the constraint that the transitions between two chunks
never created acoustical. Participants were told that two sound ingeneers had been
asked to organize the chunks in a musical coherent way. One of the ingeneers was
an expert but not the other one. Two main tasks were required of our participants.
First they were required to indicated “on line“ when they perceived an incoherent link.
At the end of the piece, they indicated which of the two sound ingeneers they thought
had worked on the piece.
A control experiment consisted in presenting chunks two by two without the whole
musical context. Participants were required to perform a similar task as the first task.
Results
The finding demonstrates a moderate sensitivity to large scale structure which was
found for both popular and contemporary musical styles. Numerous errors were
detected in the scrambled version. Musicians and nonmusicians found, in majority,
that the scrambled pieces were due to the "novice engineer". The majority of the
incoherences found were unprepared abrupt changes, unsolved melody implications,
stopped dynamic processes, incongruous juxtapositions of segments, etc.
In the control experiment, which replicates the task in a shorter temporal context (6
sec.), the increase in the number of false detections was surprisingly more massive
in coherent than in incoherent versions.
Conclusion
This experiment shows the importance of the temporal context for the capacity to
evaluate rhetorical coherence in music. The subjects seemed to need a temporal
context much longer than 6 seconds especially in coherent versions.
References
Clarke, E. & Krumhansl, C. (1990). Perceiving Musical Time, Music Perception. 7,
213-251.
Cook, N. (1987). The perception of large-scale tonal closure. Music Perception, 5,
197-205.
Deliège, I. (1989). Approche perceptive de formes musicales contemporaines. La
musique et les sciences cognitives, S. McAdamset I. Deliège (éds.),
Liège/Bruxelles, Pierre Margada Editeur, 305-326.
Gotlieb, H. & Konecni, V. (1985). The Effect of Instrumentation, Playing Style, and
Structure in the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Music Perception,
3, 87-102.
Kramer, J. (1988). The Time of Music. New York London, Schirmer Books.
Lerdhal, F. & Jackendoff, R. (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambrige
M.A., MIT Press.
Levinson, J. (1997). Music in the Moment. Ithaca and London, Cornell University
Press.
Schenker, H. (1935). Der Freie Satz. Vienne.
Stoïanova, I. (1978). Geste, texte, musique. Paris, Union Générale d’Edition.
Tillmann, B. & Bigand, E. (1996). Does Formal Musical Structure Affect Perception of
Musical Expressiveness?. Psychology of Music, 24, 3-17.
First author
Name
Current position
Main research disciplines
Main research areas
Philippe Lalitte
Musicologist
Musicology
Musical form, time perception, contemporary
music
Relevant qualification
Second author
Name
Current position
Main research disciplines
Main research areas
Relevant qualifications
Book publications
Emmanuel Bigand
PR
Music cognition
Musical expertise, Implicit learning
Bigand, E.; McAdams, S. (1993). Penser les
Sons: Psychologie Cognitive de l'Audition,
Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Third author
Name
Current position
Main research disciplines
Main research areas
Relevant qualifications
Cécile Alzina
PHD student
Music cognition