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This chapter focuses on conceptual models and theories. Jeanne Bamberger's research on children's representations of musical structure are analyzed, in particular her study of one specific eight-year-old boy. The part played by categorization and cross-domain mapping in the conceptual models involving this this boy used to come to terms with a musical environment is shown. How these models are combined to form a theory of music and how this theory changes in response to changes in the task at hand are also discussed. This close-up glimpse of the structure and role of conceptual models and theories leads to a more generalized characterization of these knowledge structures, which is linked to work on similar structures in artificial intelligence, cognitive anthropology, ethnomusicology, and developmental psychology. The chapter then returns to music theory and explores the role of conceptual models and theories (that is, theories framed relative to a cognitive perspective) in analyses by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Heinrich Schenker, two of the best-known music theorists of the last three hundred years.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of two theories from Greek antiquity, the music theories of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus. These theories, and the music to which they refer, are unfamiliar even to those who make music theory the focus of their research. However, the disorienting effect of this unfamiliarity also serves to loosen our notions about what a theory of music, or a theoretical construct, should be. It is argued that the music theories of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus belong to a world remote from our own. Not only did these theorists have to grapple with the most basic of principles, but also the music they would describe is microtonal, one that is primarily concerned with the successive notes of melody rather than the simultaneous notes of harmony. Despite this, Pythagorean and Aristoxenian accounts of musical organization provide us with a glimpse into how theories are formed and, more important, the cognitive processes that are basic to these theories. In particular, three cognitive processes can be seen at work: categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.

This Epilogue sums up the conclusions of the book and puts forward some closiing thoughts. The fundamental lesson that can be learnt from the music of the California padres and their choirs and orchestras, populated by highly trained and impressive Native American artists, is that humble people are capable of astoundingly sophisticated artistry, the final chapter states. There is much we can learn about artistic beauty and the human condition from California mission music.

This chapter looks at St. Petersburg Conservatory and Soviet musicology. The St. Petersburg Conservatory bears Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's name not only on account of the composer's contribution to the Russian classical music canon, but because he is perceived as a progenitor of the institutionalized study of music in Russia—both practical and theoretical. It is true that Rimsky-Korsakov played a leading role in shaping the first syllabi of music-theoretical courses at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. However, the lineage that connects these courses to the present-day curricula is by no means as direct as it is sometimes painted. The chapter then argues that under Rimsky-Korsakov, music theory was seen as the handmaiden to composition, which hindered the institutionalization of historical musicology.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of music analysis and theory in universal and cross-cultural contexts, including: Analysis: Definitions and Perspectives; Choosing Perspectives for this Book; World Music as a Context for New Music; Categorizing Music; Periodicity and the Composer's Toolbox; Qualities of Periodicity; and Universals and a Future Music Theory.

This lecture discusses the prehistory of Chinese music theory. The earliest texts about the music theory in China are the inscriptions of the musical instruments found inside the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. The lecture describes these inscriptions and tries to identify what sort of musical development lies behind them. It determines that bells were the main influence on Chinese music theory. Bells introduced Chinese theorists to the chromatic scale and made absolute pitch important.

This chapter considers the place of zygonic theory in the broader field of music theory and analysis, and notes that it is ‘psychomusicological’ in nature. The zygonic conjecture is introduced by considering how language functions as a medium of human communication, and then noting the differences and similarities between this and music. The perceived capacity of musical sounds for self-imitation lies at the heart of the theory, and this is placed within a broader framework, which takes into account the wider environment in which music-structural cognition resides. This enables a definition of ‘music’ to be generated, which underpins the thinking in the chapters that follow, in which the theory is applied in educational, therapeutic, and psychological contexts.

This Introduction tells the story of how the author came to ponder the questions raised in this book. The Introduction goes on to discuss the scope of the book, which is to travel on two journeys: a biographical one and a musical one. Finally the Introduction outlines the purpose and aims of the book.

Prevailing music theoretical models imagine a work of music as a metaphorical body susceptible to disabling conditions of one kind or another. These theories set themselves the task of normalizing non-normative events within a subsuming explanatory framework. In the process, entire repertoires (such as atonality) may be characterized as disabled in some respect. Hepokoski/Darcy and formal “deformation”; Schenker and normalization (motion and “paralysis”); Lewin and symmetrical balance.

The overtly phenomenological study of music in Edmund Husserl's sense begins with the man himself, who made central to his theories of perception a famous analysis for perceiving a sustained tone. That analysis is highlighted by Izchak Miller in a recent philosophical commentary. Miller also devotes much attention to “Husserl's Account of Perceiving a Melody.” This discussion, which includes an account of listening to the opening theme from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, does not itself invoke sophisticated music-theoretical apparatus. Thomas Clifton also explored the phenomenology of music theory. It is not clear what a “theory of music” might be, or even a “theory of modern Western art-music,” but it so far includes a theory of musical perception and people's “musical behavior,” a category that includes competent listening to be sure, but also competent production and performance.

This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Arnold Schönberg. He cites the main problem with Schönberg's musical thinking: The reality of cadence to a key or modal center is basic in all the music of the world (Western and non-Western). This reality is also related to the primacy of the intervals of the fifth, fourth, and octave in all the world's music as well as in the physical acoustics of sound. Similarly for the regular rhythmic pulse. Any theory of music that eliminates these realities is doomed to a marginal role in the music of the world. The postman will never whistle Schönberg.

The links between musical sound and various body movements are so numerous and robust that researchers have come to believe that sensations of body movement are integral to musical experience as such, or to put it differently, that the perception and cognition of music is a fusion of auditory and motor sensations. In the context of music and consciousness, one consequence of this auditory-motor fusion is the belief that awareness of musical sound can be understood as an awareness of various sound-related actions. For this reason, this chapter focuses on sound-action awareness in music. It presents a spectrum of research that may shed light on this as well as some ideas on how sound-action awareness might encourage us to revise established ways of thinking in Western music theory.

This chapter focuses on the forms of one pentachord ubiquitous in Stockhausen' Klavierstück III. It develops a special group of transformations, one suggested by the musical interrelations of the pentachord forms. All pentachord forms of the music are arranged into a spatial configuration that illustrates the network structure for this particular phenomenon, over the entire piece. The temporal progression of pentachord forms through that spatial structure suggests formal assertions about the piece. The process of network formation is compared with observations by Jeanne Bamberger on how children arrange bells to play a familiar tune.