Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch [Paperback]

This book addresses the central problem of music cognition: how listeners' responses move beyond mere registration of auditory events to include the organization, interpretation, and remembrance of these events in terms of their function in a musical context of pitch and rhythm. Equally important, the work offers an analysis of the relationship between the psychological organization of music and its internal structure. Combining over a decade of original research on music cognition with an overview of the available literature, the work will be of interest to cognitive and physiological psychologists, psychobiologists, musicians, music researchers, and music educators. The author provides the necessary background in experimental methodology and music theory so that no specialized knowledge is required for following her major arguments.

1. Objectives and Methods
2. Quantifying Tonal Hierarchies and Key Distances
3. Musical Correlates of Perceived Tonal Hierarchies
4. A Key-Finding Algorithm Based on Tonal Hierarchies
5. Perceived Relations Between Musical Tones
6. Perceptual Organization and Pitch Memory
7. Quantifying Harmonic Hierarchies and Key Distances
8. Perceived Harmonic Relations
9. Perceiving Multiple Keys: Modulation and Polytonality
10. Tonal Hierarchies in Atonal and Non-Western Tonal Music
11. Music Cognition: Theoretical and Empirical Generalizations
References
Author Index
Subject Index

A remarkable collection of results achieved through more than a decade by [Krumhansl] and colleagues. . . .The book's printing, layout, and technical features are excellent. . . .Includes in a well-organized manner a wealth of important data, notions, and references; and it is an appreciable document of what can be accomplished by the cognitive approach. Everyone seriously concerned with the perception of music should carefully study this book. --ACUSTICA