8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

1/8

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

Accessed: 03/04/2009 18:32

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3595436?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3595436?origin=JSTOR-pdf

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

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

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

3/8

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

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

4/8

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

5/8

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

6/8

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

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

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.

REFERENCES

Brower,

C.

2000. A

Cognitive

Theory

of Musical

Meaning.

Journal

of

Music

Theory

44: 323-79.

Brown,

S. 2001. The

'Musilanguage'

Model of Music.

In

TheOriginsofMusic.Edited by N. L. Wallin,B. Merker,

and

S.

Brown.

Cambridge:

MIT Press.

Damasio,

A. 1999.

The

Feeling of

What

Happens: Body

and

Emotion in

the

Making

of

Consciousness.New York: Har-

courtBrace.

22 Damasio

1999,

70.

Gabrielsson,

A. 1999.

The

Performanceof

Music.

In The

Psychology

f

Music.Edited

by

D. Deutsch. Second

edi-

tion. New

York:Academic.

Halle,

J.,

and F.

Lerdahl. 1994. A Generative

Textsetting

Model. Current

Musicology

5: 3-26.

Handel,

S. 1989.

Listening.

Cambridge:

MIT

Press.

Hayes,

B.

1989.

The

Prosodic

Hierarchy

in

Poetry.

In

Phonetics

and

Phonology:

Rhythm

and Meter. Edited

by

P.

Kiparsky

nd G. Youmans.New

York:Academic.

Hayes,

B.,

and

A. Kaun.

1996.

The Role of

Phonological

Phrasing

in

Sung

and

Chanted

Verse.

The

Linguistic

Review 13: 243-303.

Heider,F.,

and M. Simmel. 1944.

An

ExperimentalStudy

of ApparentBehavior. American ournalof Psychology7:

243-59.

Jackendoff,

R. 1982. Semantics nd

Cognition.

Cambridge:

MIT

Press.

.

1989.

Rhythmic

Structuresn Music and

Language.

In

Phonetics

nd

Phonology.

Rhythm

andMeter.Edited

by

P.

Kiparsky

nd G. Youmans.New

York:Academic.

Krumhansl,

C.

L. 1990.

Cognitive

Foundations

of

Musical

Pitch.

New York:Oxford

University

Press.

Ladd,D. R. 1996. IntonationalPhonology.Cambridge:Cam-

bridge University

Press.

Lakoff,

G.,

and M.

Johnson

1980.

Metaphors

WeLive

By.

Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press.

Larson,

S. 2002.

Musical

Forces,

Melodic

Expectation,

and

Jazz

Melody.

Music

Perception

9: 351-85.

Lerdahl,

F.

1987. Timbral Hierarchies.

Contemporary

MusicReview 1: 135-60.

.2001a.

The Sounds

of

Poetry

Viewed as

Music.

In

The BiologicalFoundationsof Music. Edited by R. J.

Zatorre and I. Peretz. Annals of the

New York

Academy

of Sciences 930: 337-54.

. 2001b. TonalPitch

Space.

New York:Oxford Uni-

versity

Press.

Lerdahl,

F.,

and R.

Jackendoff.

1983.

A

Generative

Theory f

TonalMusic.

Cambridge:

MIT Press.

372

8/20/2019 04 Lerdahl 2003

8/8

TWO WAYS

IN

WHICH MUSIC RELATES TO THE WORLD

Lerdahl,

F.,

and

C. L. Krumhansl. 003.

Lateoria

de

la ten-

si6n tonal

y

sus consecuencias

para

a

investigaci6n

musi-

cal. In Los

ziltimos

diez anos

en la

investigacidn

musical.

Edited

by

J.

Martin

Galan

& C. Villar-Taboada.Valla-

dolid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de

Valladolid.

Lerdahl, F.,

C. L.

Krumhansl,

.

Fineberg,

and

E.

Hannon.

2000.

Modeling

Tonal

Tension and Attraction.

Paper

given

atToronto 2000: Musical Intersections.

Liberman, M.,

and

A.

Prince. 1977. On Stress

and Lin-

guistic

Rhythm.

Linguistic

nquiry

8:

249-336.

Margulis,

E.

H.

2003.

Melodic

Expectation:

A

Discussion

and Model.

Ph.D.

dissertation,

Columbia

University.

Morris, R. D. 1993. New Directions in the Theory and

Analysis

of

MusicalContour. Music

Theory

Spectrum

5:

205-28.

Oehrle,

R.

T. 1989.

Temporal

Structures

n

Verse

Design.

In

Phonetics nd

Phonology: hythm

and Meter.Edited

by

P.

Kiparsky

nd

G. Youmans.

New

York:Academic.

Paschen,

E.,

and

R. P.

Mosby,

eds. 2001.

Poetry

Speaks.

Naperville,

L:

Sourcebooks.

Patel,

A.

D.,

and

I.

Peretz.

1997.

Is

Music

Autonomous

from Language?A NeuropsychologicalAppraisal. In

Perception

nd

Cognition

of

Music. Edited

by

I.

Deliege

and

J.

A.

Sloboda.

Hove,

UK:

Psychology

Press.

Peretz,

I.

1993.

Auditory

Agnosia:

A

Functional

Analysis.

In

Thinking

n

Sound:The

Cognitive

Psychology

f

Human

Audition.

Edited

by

S.

McAdams and E.

Bigand.

Oxford:

Oxford

University

Press.

Pierrehumbert,

.

1980. The

Phonology

and

Phonetics of

English

Intonation. Ph.D.

dissertation,

Massachusetts

Institute of

Technology.

Pinker,

S. 1997. How

the

Mind Works. ew

York:Norton.

Rothfarb,

L.

2002.

Energetics.

n

The

Cambridge

istoryof

Music

Theory.

Edited

by

T.

Christensen.

Cambridge:

Cambridge

University

Press.

Rousseau,

J.-J.

[1760]

1966. Essai sur

l'origine

des

langues.

In On

the

Origin

of Language.

Translated

by

J.

H.

Moran

and A.

Gode.

Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press,

1966.

Ruwet,

N.

1972.

Langage,musique,

oesie.

Paris:

Seuil.

Wallin,

N.

L.,

B.

Merker,

and S.

Brown,

eds. 2001. The Ori-

gins

of

Music.

Cambridge:

MIT Press.

373