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Society for Music Theory
Two Ways in Which Music Relates to the WorldAuthor(s): Fred LerdahlSource: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 367-373Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for Music TheoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3595436
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2/8
TWO
WAYS
IN
WHICH MUSIC RELATES
TO
THE
WORLD
Essay:
Two
Ways
n Which
Music Relates
to the World
FRED LERDAHL
Of
all the
arts,
music
possesses
the most technical vocabu-
lary.
This state
of
affairs
gives
music theorists the
ability
to
speak
and write
about
music with
enviable
precision,
but it
also isolates us. Technical
training
in music
theory
is a
spe-
cialized endeavor.
Nonmusicians,
and even musicians who
are
not
theoretically
nclined,
do
not
easily
understandus.
From
our
isolation
and their
incomprehension
comes the
tendency
to
regard
music as
existing
in
a
bubble,
unrelated
o
anything
else in
the
world. This
view
is
surely
mistaken.
Here,
I
shall
discuss
two
respects
in
which music relates
to
the world
beyond
itself: ts
common
origin
and sharedstruc-
tures with
language,
and its
projection
of intuitions of ten-
sion, attraction,and agency through the internalization of
motion. Both
aspects
are
fundamental
o musicalemotion.
Music exists in
complex
form
only
in the
human
species,
and
it
appears
n
all
human
societies.
How did
it
arise?
Early
ethnomusicologists
were concerned with this
question,
but
in
recent
decadesthe
issue has
largely
been
neglected.
A
sign
of recent
reengagement
is
a rather
speculative
book,
The
Origins of
Music,
in which
biologists, paleontologists,
evo-
lutionary psychologists,
and
anthropologists propose
that
music-makingconferredanevolutionaryadvantageuponour
distant ancestors.1
The
hypothesized
causes for the musical
capacity
include Darwinian sexual
selection,
synchronized
group
behavior,
social
bonding during grooming,
mother-
i
Wallin,
et
al.,
2001.
infant
interplay,
and
expressive
gestural
communication.
These
causes are
not
mutually
exclusive.
One
suggestive
idea in this
volume,
by
Steven
Brown,
is
that
music first
emerged together
with
language
in
a musi-
language
that
eventually
split
into the two modalities that
we
recognize
today.
The
notion
that music
and
language
have
the same source
goes
back
at least to
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau,
who wrote:
With
the
first
voices
came the first articulations
or sounds formed
ac-
cording
to the
respective
passions
that
dictated them
. .
Thus
verse,
singing,
and
speech
have a common
origin.
The first
discourses were
the
first
songs.
The
periodic
recurrences
and measures of
rhythm,
the
melodious modulations
of
accents,
gave
birth
to
poetry
and music
along
with language.2
Brown's
evolutionary argument
is
very general,
but it
can
be
supported by
two lines of
contemporary
evidence. The
first
comes from the brain
sciences.
The
neuropsychologist
Isabelle
Peretz
has
reached some
telling
conclusions based
on
patterns
of
behavioral deficits
in
patients
with brain
lesions.3
First,
musical
processing
divides
into two broad
components,
rhythm
and
pitch.
Second,
musical
and
linguis-
tic
processing
share
certain
deficits
but not others. On one
hand,
rhythmic
processing
takes
place
in the same areas of
the brain
for
both
language
and
music. On the
other,
lexical
retrieval
and
syntax
in
language
and
pitch
processing
in
music
are activated
in
different areas
of the brain.
Contour
recognition appears
to take
place
in
a different
brain
area
than
interval
recognition
and to
precede
it in
processing,
so
that tone-deaf
people
are
usually
able to
speak
with normal
contour
but contour-deaf
people
are
necessarily
tone-deaf.
These conclusions
are
supported
in
part by
new
imaging
techniques that track local brain activation.
The second line
of
evidence comes
from
theoretical
ac-
counts
of
linguistic
and musical
cognitive
capacities.
The
2 Rousseau
[1760] 1966,
50.
3
Peretz 1993
and
Patel
& Peretz
1997.
367
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MUSIC
THEORY
SPECTRUM
25
(2003)
linguistic
capacity
has three broad
components:
semantics,
syntax,
and
phonology.
Music
does
not,
except
peripherally,
have semantics in
a
linguistic
sense,
which
includes lexical
items as
well as
concepts
such as referenceand
entailment.
Nor does music have a
specifically
inguistic syntax,
which
includes
parts
of
speech,
labeled
phrase
structures,
negation,
anaphora,
and so
forth.
Rather,
the
linguistic component
that most
resembles music is
phonology,
which,
like
music,
concernsthe
organization
of sound
in
time.
The sounds
of
sentences break
up
into units of
phrases
and
words;
these
units
decompose
into
patterns
of
stressed and
unstressed
sounds and of
long
and short
sounds,
and
they
form
rising
and
falling
contours.
All of these phonologicalfeatureshave musicalcounter-
parts.
In
a recent
articleI
develop
these
parallels
hrough
a
treatment of the
sounds of a
short
poem,
Nothing
Gold
Can
Stay by
Robert
Frost,
entirely
as
if
they
were musical
sounds,
ignoring
their
meaning
and
syntax.4
The sounds
of
the
poem
are
put
through
the
grouping,
metrical,
and reduc-
tional
components
of
Lerdahl
&Jackendoff
1983
(hereafter
GTTM),
and
through
a
newly
devised method
for the deri-
vation
of
contour.
The
analyticprocedure
elies on
aspects
of
generativephonological theory,specifically he prosodichi-
erarchy,
stress
theory,
and contour
theory.5
Briefly,
the
prosodic
hierarchy
describesthe
grouping
of
speech
sounds
into
the
levels of
the
syllable,
word
or
clitic
group,
phonolog-
ical
phrase,
intonational
phrase,
and
utterance.
The stress
theory
uses a
notation
similar
to
GTTM's
metrical
grid
and
represents
hierarchical
patterns
of
syllabic
stress.
Stressesare
assigned
cyclically
over the
prosodicgroupings.
After
these
structuresare
established,
the
model
assigns
metricalstructureby finding the optimal match between a
permissible
metrical
grid
and the
stress
pattern,
essentially
as
Lerdahl 2001a.
For
prosodic
hierarchy,
see
Hayes
1989;
for
stress
theory,
Liberman &
Prince
1977;
and for
countour
theory,
Pierrehumbert
1980 and Ladd
1996.
in the
musical
case.
Syllables
are
placed
not
only
to
match
stress and
grid
but also to
maximize,
through
relative dis-
tances between attack
points,
the
perceptual
projection
of
the
constituents of the
prosodic
hierarchy.
n
this
way long
and short durationsare
assigned
to
syllables.
It
may
be ob-
jected
that
language
and even metered
poetry
are not
spoken
with
periodicity
between
metrical accents.
However,
limer-
icks
and
many
short verses are
recited
with
great
metrical
regularity,6
nd music is never
played
by
human
performers
with
complete
isochrony.7
The difference
is one
of
degree.
Periodic meter is an idealized
mental construct for both
music and
poetry.
The derivationof contour
follows
largely
from the
stress
grid, since the perceptionof relative stressis primarilya re-
sult of relative
pitch height,
not of
intensity,
as one
might
suppose.8
Following
intonational
theory
and
data,9
which
establish
ocal
pitches
usually
near
the onset of
syllables
even
though
pitch
height
continuously
modulates,
the
model
posits
four levels of tone
height,
with
glides
assumed
be-
tween levels. In other
languages
the
treatment of
pitch
height might vary.
Within
the four-level
framework,
pitch
height
is
assigned
via the stress
grid
from
global
to local
levels,guidedby a few paradigmatic hapes.'0
The addition of contour to
the metrical
and
durational
assignmentsyields
the
normativerealizationof
the
poem
in
musical notation shown in
Example
1. Contained within
this
seemingly transparent
notation are the structuresof
the
prosodic hierarchy,
phonological
stress,
the metrical
grid,
duration,
and
pitch height.11
6
Oehrle 1989.
7
Gabrielsson
1999.
8
Handel
1989.
9
Reviewed
in
Ladd 1996.
10
This
method bears
comparison
to the
pitch-contour
tradition in
music
theory,
in
particular
he
contour reduction
algorithm
in
Morris
1993.
II
The
phonologist
William
Idsardi
recently apprised
me of Frost's read-
ing
of
this
poem,
recorded
in
Paschen and
Mosby
2001. Frost's rendi-
tion is
extremely
close to that
represented
in
Example
1.
4
5
368
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TWO WAYS IN WHICH
MUSIC
RELATES
TO THE WORLD
a
specific
manner
he otherwise
vague
intuition
that
listening
to a
piece
of
music is like
taking
a
journey.
When
allied
to
words,
pitch-space paths
take on
a
narrative
dimension as
well.
The pitch-spacetheoryalsoenablesthe predictionof
pat-
terns of
tension
and
relaxationas events
unfold. Four condi-
tions
are needed to make valid
predictions.
First,
there
must
be a
component
that derives
and
represents
hierarchical
event
structure,
ince
tension is
judged hierarchically
more
than
sequentially.17
This
goal
is
accomplished
by
an im-
proved
versionof GTTM's
prolongationalanalysis.
Second,
there
must
be
a calculationof
the
perceived
distancebetween
any
two
chords,
something
the
model
does
with
great
accu-
racy.Third, there must be a treatmentof surfaceor sensory
dissonance.
Although
this
topic
has
been
studied
extensively
by psychoacousticians,
ts
behavior
in
musical contexts is
complex,
and here the
theory
settles for an
approximate
implementation.
Fourth,
there
must
be a
model of
melodic
and harmonic
attractions.The
theory
succeeds
in
this
goal,
subject
to
computational
ine-tuning
from
experimental
vi-
dence that is
only
beginning
to become
available.18Carol
Krumhansl and
I
have undertaken an
ongoing empirical
study of the predictionsof the tension model over a wide
range
of diatonic
and chromatic
music.
The
correlationsbe-
tween
predictions
and data are
generally
very
high,
and
they
permit
detailed and
illuminating interpretations
about lis-
teners'
responses.19
According
to this
theoretical
and
empirical
perspective,
then,
not
only
the
linguistic
but
also
the
musical
capacity
employs
space
and motion in
a
constitutive
way.
This em-
ployment
is
not
just
cognitive
in a
disembodied
sense
but is a
17
This conclusion is
sustained
by
empirical
data
on
hierarchical and
se-
quential predictions,
as
reported
in
Lerdahl,
et
al.,
2000.
i8
See also
Larson
2002
and
Margulis
2003.
19 A
preliminary
version of this
research
appears
in
Lerdahl
and Krum-
hansl 2003. For
a
historical review
of
music
theories
of
tonal
motion,
tension,
and
attraction,
see Rothfarb
2002.
cause of the visceral sense of the ebb and flow of musical
tension.20
RecallPinker's tatement: Location n
space
is one of
the
two fundamental
metaphors
n
language.
The other is
force,
agency,
and causation. The
theory
of tonal attraction
brings
force
into the
picture
of
musical
space
and motion. Like
a
spaceship
moving
among
the moons of
Jupiter,
a
melody
or
chord
progression
moves in a certaindirection
but is
affected
in its
velocity
and
direction
by
the relative
gravitational
or
attractive orce
of other
pitches
and chords.A
neighboring
ornament
may
have little effect on its
motion,
but a tonic
has
considerablemass and
may bring
the tonal
spaceship
o
rest.
But what
of
agency
and causation?
Pinker
refers o
a clas-
sic experimentby Heider & Simmel (1944), in which they
made a
cartoon film
using
three dots that were
perceivedby
subjects
as
moving
not
as inanimate
objects
but as
animate
agents.
Pinker
writes:
Agents
are
recognized by
their
ability
to violate intuitive
physics by
starting,
stopping,
swerving,
or
speeding up
without
an external
nudge,
especially
when
they
persistently
approach
or avoid
some
other
object.
The
agents
are
thought
to have an internal and
renewable
source of
energy,
force,
impetus,
or
oomph,
which
they
use to
propel
themselves,
usually
in the service of a
goal.21
Similarly,
a
melody
or
chord
progression
does
not
simply
follow
the
inertial
path
of
least
resistance.
It
would
be
dull
and
would
quickly
come to
a
stop
unless enlivened
by
mo-
tion
away
from
places
that
pull
it
toward rest.
Such
motion
works
against
inertia
and seems
to
be caused
by
an
animate
agent.
Furthermore,
such
motion
causes an emotional re-
sponse. Echoing
Pinker,
the
neurologist
Antonio Damasio
writes:
You can find the basic
configurations
of emotions in
simple
organisms,
even in
unicellular
organism
. .
.
You
can do
the
same
thing
with a
simple chip moving
about on a
computer
screen. Some
jagged
fast
movements
will
appear angry,
harmonious but
explosive jumps
will
20 See Brower 2000.
2I
Pinker
1997,
322.
37I
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7/8
MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM
25
(2003)
look
joyous, ecoiling
motions will look fearful. A video that
depicts
several
geometric shapes
moving
about at different rates and
holding
varied
relationships
reliably
elicits attributions
of
emotional
state from
normal adults and even
children.
The reason
why
you
can anthro-
pomorphize
the
chip
or
an animal so
effectively
is
simple: emotion,
as
the word
indicates,
is
about
movement,
about
externalized
behavior,
about
certain orchestrations
of reactions
to a
given
cause,
within a
given
environment.22
Here is a central
source of musicalemotion. We internal-
ize
the motion
of
pitches
and chords
in
reaction to contex-
tual tonal forces in
musical
space.
We attribute
agency
and
causation
to
musical
motions that violate intuitive
physics
and
inevitability
o
motions that
yield
to
musical nertia and
force.The character
f
the musical
motions,
which
is
shaped
also
by
their
temporal
realization,
mirrors
equivalent
mo-
tions in
the
real
physical
world. We
map specific
musical
motions onto
specific
emotional
qualities,again
in reflection
of real-world
equivalences.
This
argument
about musical
space,
motion, force,
agency,
and emotion
rejoins
the earlierdiscussion about the
origin
of musilanguage
n
expressiveauditorygestures.
But
language
lacks
pitch
structure
except
in
the most
rudimen-
tary
sense.
Perhaps
music is the
quintessentially
emotional
art because its elaborate
pitch
structures o
richly
and
pre-
cisely
reflect
motion,
force,
and
agency,
and therefore
emo-
tions,
in the
outer
world.
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