Memetic Perspectives on the Evolution of Tonal Systems

Cohn (1996) and Taruskin (1985) consider the increasing prominence during the nineteenth century of harmonic progressions derived from the hexatonic and octatonic pitch collections respectively. This development is clearly evident in music of the third quarter of the century onwards and is a consequence of forces towards non-diatonic organization latent in earlier music. This article conceptualizes such forces as memetic — drawing a distinction between memetic processes in music itself and those in the realm of music theory — and interprets the gradualistic evolution of tonal systems as one of their most significant consequences. After outlining hypotheses for the mechanisms driving such evolution, it identifies a number of ‘musemes’ implicated in hexatonic and octatonic organization in a passage from Mahler’s Symphony no. 10. Pople’s (2002) Tonalities music-analysis software is used to explore the tonal organization of the passage, which is considered in relation to the musemes hypothesized to generate and underpin it

Information dynamics: patterns of expectation and surprise in the perception of music

This is a postprint of an article submitted for consideration in Connection Science © 2009 [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Connection Science is available online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0954-0091&volume=21&issue=2-3&spage=8

Temperament Systems Influence Emotion Induction but not Makam Recognition Performance in Turkish Makam Music

We tested how induced emotions and Turkish makam recognition are influenced by participation in an ear training classes, and if either is influenced by the temperament system employed. The ear training class was attended by 19 music students and was based on the Hicaz makam presented as a between-subjects factor in either unfamiliar Turkish Original Temperament (OT, pitches unequally divided into 24 intervals) or familiar Western Equal Temperament (ET, pitches equally divided into 12 intervals). Before the and after the class, participants listened to 20 music excerpts from five different Turkish makams (in both OT and ET versions). Emotion-induction was assessed via GEMS-25, and participants were also asked to identify the makam that was present in the excerpt. The unfamiliar original temperament was experienced as less vital and more uneasy before the ear training class, and recognition of the Hicaz makam increased after ear training classes (independent of the temperament system employed). Results suggest that unfamiliar temperament systems are experienced as less vital and more uneasy. Furthermore, being exposed to this temperament system for just one hour does not seem to be enough to change participants’ mental representations of it or their emotional responses to it

A Memetic Analysis of a Phrase by Beethoven: Calvinian Perspectives on Similarity and Lexicon-Abstraction

This article discusses some general issues arising from the study of similarity in music, both human-conducted and computer-aided, and then progresses to a consideration of similarity relationships between patterns in a phrase by Beethoven, from the first movement of the Piano Sonata in A flat major op. 110 (1821), and various potential memetic precursors. This analysis is followed by a consideration of how the kinds of similarity identified in the Beethoven phrase might be understood in psychological/conceptual and then neurobiological terms, the latter by means of William Calvin’s Hexagonal Cloning Theory. This theory offers a mechanism for the operation of David Cope’s concept of the lexicon, conceived here as a museme allele-class. I conclude by attempting to correlate and map the various spaces within which memetic replication occurs

Understood at Last?: A Memetic Analysis of Beethoven’s ‘Bloody Fist’

As a singular moment in the western canon, the opening of the recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has prompted a variety of structural and expressive readings. This paper explores its intertextual connections with Mozart’s Don Giovanni from a memetic perspective, outlining certain extra musical interpretations, including some related to Susan McClary’s controversial reading of the passage, one might infer from the strong musical connections

Musical events and perceptual ecologies

This paper, followed by two responses, discusses the application of ecological theory to an understanding of a number of issues in the aesthetics of music. It argues for an understanding of music as based in event perception, with an expanded conception of the sources that are specified by those events. Building on the theory of affordances, it considers the limitations of an information theoretic conception of musical complexity, discusses the importance of perceptual learning (understood as shaping by a structured environment) in understanding the affordances of music for different listeners, and raises the challenging problem of the terms in which musical materials might be appropriately described. The apparent tension between ecological and aesthetic positions—in which adaptation and accommodation seem to be at odds with a modernist aesthetic perspective which prioritizes the unsettling and defamiliarizing function of art—is confronted, before the paper concludes with some observations about different disciplinary perspectives on aesthetics, and matters of specificity and generality