This book presents a coherent state-of-the-art survey on the area of systematic and cognitive musicology which has enjoyed dynamic growth now for many years. It is devoted to exploring the relationships between acoustics, human information processing, and culture as well as to methodological issues raised by the widespread use of computers as a powerful tool for theory construction, theory testing, and the manipulation of musical information or any kind of data manipulation related to music.

United in their indebtedness to the scholarship of Raymond Monelle, an international group of contributors, including leading authorities on music and culture, come together in this state of the art volume to investigate different ways in which music signifies. Music semiotics asks what music signifies as well as how the signification process takes place. Looking at the nature of musical texts and music's narrativity, a number of the essays in this collection delve into the relationship between music and philosophy, literature, poetry, folk traditions and the theatre, with opera a genre that particularly lends itself to this mode of investigation. Other contributions look at theories of musical markedness, metaphor and irony, using examples and specific musical texts to serve as case studies to validate their theoretical approaches. Musical works discussed include those by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Stravinsky, Bart?Xenakis, Kutavicius and John Adams, offering stimulating discussions of music that attest to its beauty as much as to its intellectual challenge. Taking Monelle's writing as a model, the contributions adhere to a method of logical argumentation presented in a civilized and respectful way, even - and particularly - when controversial issues are at stake, keeping in mind that contemplating the significance of music is a way to contemplate life itself.

This book introduces a theory of music analysis that one can use to explore aspects of segmentation and associative organization in a wide range of repertoire including Western classical music from the Baroque to the present, with potential applications to jazz and popular music, and some non-Western musics. Rather than a methodology, the theory provides analysts with precise language and a broad, flexible conceptual framework through which they can formulate and investigate questions of interest and develop their own interpretations of individual pieces and passages. The theory begins with a basic distinction among three domains of musical experience and discourse about it: the sonic (psychoacoustic); the contextual (or associative, sparked by varying degrees of repetition); and the structural (guided by a specific theory of musical structure or syntax invoked by the analyst). A comprehensive presentation of the theory, with copious musical illustrations, is balanced with close analyses of works by Beethoven, Debussy, Nancarrow, Riley, Feldman, and Morris. Dora A. Hanninen is professor of music theory at the University of Maryland. She received the 2010 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory.

An international collection examining the opportunities for using music-induced states of altered consciousness. The observations of the contributors cover a wide range of music types capable of inducing altered states. It will interest practicing music therapists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists, students and academics in the field.

An edited collection of papers which explore a large number of topics related to musical imagery. Musical imagery can be defined as our mental capacity for imagining sound in the absence of a directly-audible sound source, meaning that we can recall and re-experience or even invent new musical sound through our inner ear. The first part of the volume is focused on theoretical issues such as the history, epistemology, neurological bases, and cognitive models of musical imagery. The second part presents various applications of musical imagery in performance and composition, and provides the reader with a broad overview of the many musical activities which are concerned with musical imagery.;Musical imagery is a truly interdisciplinary subject, and it is the belief of the editors that a plurality of approaches, ranging from the introspective and philosophical to the experimental and computational, is the most fruitful strategy for exploring the subject of musical imagery.

Since the 1950s, Sound and Music Computing (SMC) research has had a profound impact on the development of culture and technology in our post-industrial society. SMC research approaches the whole sound and music communication chain from a multidisciplinary point of view. By combining scientific, technological and artistic methodologies it aims at understanding, modeling, representing and producing sound and music using computational approaches. This book, by describing the state of the art in SMC research, gives hints of future developments, whose general purpose will be to bridge the semantic gap, the hiatus that currently separates sound from sense and sense from sound.

This first definitive reference resource to take a broad interdisciplinary approach to the nexus between music and the social and behavioral sciences examines how music affects human beings and their interactions in and with the world. The interdisciplinary nature of the work provides a starting place for students to situate the status of music within the social sciences in fields such as anthropology, communications, psychology, linguistics, sociology, sports, political science and economics, as well as biology and the health sciences. Features: Approximately 450 articles, arranged in A-to-Z fashion and richly illustrated with photographs, provide the social and behavioral context for examining the importance of music in society. Entries are authored and signed by experts in the field and conclude with references and further readings, as well as cross references to related entries. A Reader's Guide groups related entries by broad topic areas and themes, making it easy for readers to quickly identify related entries. A Chronology of Music places material into historical context; a Glossary defines key terms from the field; and a Resource Guide provides lists of books, academic journals, websites and cross-references. The multimedia digital edition is enhanced with video and audio clips and features strong search-and-browse capabilities through the electronic Reader’s Guide, detailed index, and cross references. Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, available in both multimedia digital and print formats, is a must-have reference for music and social science library collections.

A proposal that an embodied cognition approach to music research—drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology—offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Digital media handles music as encoded physical energy, but humans consider music in terms of beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. In this book, drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology, Marc Leman proposes an embodied cognition approach to music research that will help bridge this gap. Assuming that the body plays a central role in all musical activities, and basing his approach on a hypothesis about the relationship between musical experience (mind) and sound energy (matter), Leman argues that the human body is a biologically designed mediator that transfers physical energy to a mental level—engaging experiences, values, and intentions—and, reversing the process, transfers mental representation into material form. He suggests that this idea of the body as mediator offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Leman proposes that, under certain conditions, the natural mediator (the body) can be extended with artificial technology-based mediators. He explores the necessary conditions and analyzes ways in which they can be studied. Leman outlines his theory of embodied music cognition, introducing a model that describes the relationship between a human subject and its environment, analyzing the coupling of action and perception, and exploring different degrees of the body's engagement with music. He then examines possible applications in two core areas: interaction with music instruments and music search and retrieval in a database or digital library. The embodied music cognition approach, Leman argues, can help us develop tools that integrate artistic expression and contemporary technology.