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A surprising amount of repetition characterizes not only individual musical pieces, but also our behaviors in relation to them. That we revisit the same pieces a remarkable number of times is illustrated not just by experimental documentation, but also by casual glances at the playlists of top-40 radio stations, or at the statistics for iTunes track plays. This chapter chronicles the science of repeated exposures, examining the large literature on familiarity in music and other domains, including Zajonc’s mere exposure and subsequent theories related to the Wundt curve. It argues on the one hand that the pleasure of musical relistenings illuminates important differences between musical and linguistic communication, and on the other hand that the pleasure of musical relistenings is only superficially similar to the pleasure of revisiting a favorite chocolate until the box is gone. A systematic investigation of this comparison results in new perspectives on the nature of musical pleasure itself.

This chapter introduces the co-authored volume Experience and Meaning in Music Performance. The three key terms are introduced and defined alongside an explanation of the overall aims and methods of the project. Two themes that cut across each of these are delineated: entrainment and gesture; in the following section, some theoretical considerations concerning universal and culturally specific ways of considering the role of the body, and the relationship between meaning and embodiment, are presented. The chapter concludes with discussion of methodologies employed by authors within the framework of the project.

This chapter examines relationships between the empirical study of musical entrainment and an ethnographic research model. Moving beyond a description of the concept of entrainment (roughly speaking, synchronisation), its wider context—that is, dynamical systems theory—is introduced, and the implications of viewing musical ensembles as complex systems discussed. Such an approach presents a challenge to many proponents of an interpretative, humanistic approach who see scientific approaches as essentially reductionist: this critique is addressed head-on with a refutation of the notion that all scientific method is necessarily reductionist. The chapter argues that in order to understand musical interactions it is important to bring the unique insights of a dynamical systems approach into a productive dialogue with an ethnographic and interpretative framework alert to local contexts and meanings.

This chapter offers an empirical examination of the nature of groove in jazz performance. By triangulating detailed timing data taken from the live performance by a jazz trio with the reflections of the musicians on their playing together, the study offers a rich understanding of temporal praxis and its meanings for musicians. Drawing on entrainment theory and the notion of cultural models from cognitive anthropology, the chapter looks beyond the dichotomy of structure and process, and explores how mental structures and sensori-motor processes interact in the shaping of shared musical time.

In this chapter we propose an integrated framework that links the perception and cognition of music to the production of emotion by means of psychobiological pathways recruiting various subsystems of the central and autonomous nervous systems. These pathways (which we call routes) are Appraisal, Memory, Entrainment, Empathy, and Contagion, and they permit to describe the nature and substrate of a wide variety of emotional responses to music. We focus on music characteristics, more precisely the musical structure and performance variables, as the determinant factors of emotional indication, while considering a variety of possible modulatory effects related to listener characteristics and states, the performer, and the listening context.