Review Author(s): David Huron Review by: David Huron Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Summer, 1995), pp. 473481 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40285677 Accessed: 09-06-2015 05:57 UTC
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© 1995 bythe regentsof the universityof California
MusicPerception Summer1995, Vol. 12, No. 4, 473-509
Book Reviews Nicholas Cook, Music, Imagination, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.265 pp. $18.95 (paper) What good is music theory? This blunt question might well have been the subtitle to this provocative and insightful book by Nicholas Cook. In an age dominated by scientific explanation, is there any room for the seemingly rarefied and esoteric writings of music theory and analysis? Cook answers yes, but in reflecting on Cook's arguments, many theorists are apt to find his defense of their discipline utterly appalling. Over the course of history, music theorists have generated a rich vocabulary and a valuable conceptual toolbox for coming to understand Western music. In the past century, however, a parallel stream of experimental research has made significant gains in providing perceptual and cognitive accounts of various aspects of musical practice and experience. In many cases, traditional theory and scientifically inspired perceptual experimentation have produced converging accounts. A great number of theoretical concepts relating to pitch, chords, harmony, scale, key, consonance, voice leading, rhythm, and so on have received empirical confirmation and explication. In other cases, however, various theoretical concepts have failed to display presumed perceptual or cognitive effects. For example, Millar (1984) and others have shown that most serial transformations fail to be perceptible- even by expert musicians. Research by Frances (1984), Gotlieb and Konecni (1985), and Cook's own empirical investigations (1987) suggest that typical listeners do not hear the hierarchical organization of classical forms, nor is there evidence that listeners apprehend (even at an unconscious level) when works return to the original keyexcept when the time scale is less than about a minute. In general, current experimental research seems to suggest that both typical and skilled music listening occurs on a much more "shallow" or surface level than some theorists have supposed. A major portion of Music, Imagination, and Culture examines the perceptual or cognitive correlates of various structural concepts common in Western music theory. Cook's review here is of the form of "the emperor's new clothes"- documenting how several concepts considered central to much modern discourse in music theory seem to have no perceptual concomitants. Indeed, the concepts that most fire the imaginations of music 473
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theorists appear to be those concepts that most frequently fail the test of human auditory perception. What is one to make of theoreticalconcepts such as key closure, large-scale hierarchical structure, thematic or serial unity, or formal process? Although many theorists have assumed that these concepts bear some perceptual import, Cook suggests that it is wrong to judge these theoretical notions on the basis of audibility: A Schenkeriananalysisis not a scientificexplanation,but a metaphorical one; it is not an accountof how people actuallyhearpiecesof music, but a way of imaginingthem. [p. 4] [T]hestructuralwholenessof musicalworksshouldbe seen as a metaphorical construction,ratherthan as directlycorrespondingto anything that is real in a perceptualsense... [p. 5] Cook refers to this metaphorical or imaginative way of experiencing a work as musicological listening- a term that he distinguishes from musical listening. By "musical listening," Cook has in mind a direct, nonanalytic, effortless experience that, even when we try to listen to music more reflectively, tends to overtake us. According to Cook, it is this notion of musical listening that is at the heart of writings by theorists such as Maurice Halbwachs, Thomas Clifton, Alfred Schutz, and Leon Crickmore. Conversely, Cook points to a long line of writers on aesthetics who have argued against this form of musical experience including Kant, Hegel, Collingwood, Hampshire, Scruton, and especially Hanslick: Hanslickdescribedas "pathological"anyexperienceof musicin which the listenerdid not constitutethe musicas an imaginativeobjectheldat an aestheticdistance, but instead reactedto the sound in a directly physiologicalor psychologicalsense.Heardin sucha manner,Hanslick says, music becomesno more than a drug:it "loosensthe feet or the heartjust as wine loosens the tongue".In this way it degradesthe listener...[p. 161] Given Cook's dichotomy between the "musical" and the "musicological," many scholars might be expected to line up behind one or the other conception and denigrate the other as the false path. But this is not Cook's inclination; he holds and vigorously defends both views. First, Cook presents a spirited defense of the shallow sort of "musical listening." His approach is overtly populist in tone reminiscent of John formal devices have certain that Blacking or Virgil Thomson. The very fact "to be explained to the listener means it is not of any great importance" [p. 165]. This is not to say that
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Book Reviews analytical, historical, or textual knowledge can play no part in musical listening; the listening of the connoisseur, after all, is defined by just such knowledge.. ..[A] technical analysis may uncover aspects of the musical construction that are interesting or elegant or even, in their own way, beautiful. But we are dealing here with a musicological rather than a musical beauty, [p. 166]
In a superb and memorable passage, Cook takes to task theorists such as Benjamin Boretz, Allen Forte, Steven Gilbert, and Hans Keller, who maintain that the aesthetic value of a musical work is simply a function of the work's formal structure and who try to divorce themselves from perceptual issues. So what is the value of musicological listening? Cook's defense rests on the supposition that formal theory is culture-specific and so a mythical rather than scientific mode of explanation. It is up to the psychologist or the social scientist, and not the music theorist, to study music scientifically [p. 243]. Moreover, according to Cook, the mythical mode of explanation is the bedrock of culture: A musical culture is a tradition of imagining sounds as music. Its basic identity lies in its mechanism for constituting sounds as intentional objects, from the level of a single note to that of a complete work. This means that the ubiquitous discrepancies between the manner in which musicians conceive music and that in which listeners experience it are endemic to musical culture, [p. 223] Cook continues his defense of musicological
listening with a lengthy
chapter in which he explores many aspects of musical imagination. Cook's writing here is largely inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre'sThe Psychology of the Imagination. There are some very fine phenomenological descriptions presented, including introspective accounts of trying to recall a dance from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, recalling one work while another work is playing on the radio, and a long disquisition on piano fingering. Cook shows that there is a rich set of representations of a musical work that influences how music is produced- including innumerable kinesthetic experiences of music, visual imagery of the score, and so on. But having illustrated how pianists, singers, oboists, and other musicians hold radically different productive conceptions of a given musical work, Cook abruptly changes course and attempts to downplay these differences. He does so by switching away from talking about performance imagery to analytic conceptions - especially Schenkerian-inspired notions. Drawing on descriptive research on Beethoven sketches and autographs, Cook largely agrees with the view that composers conceive of a work as a
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complete unity and that the differences in notational renderings (e.g., revisions to autographs) nevertheless remain true to some underlying analytic conception. Although this chapter contains many interestingpoints, it seems to have little to do with Cook's wider argument in this book. Indeed, Cook seems to have lost his train of thought- a problem to which I will return later in this review. Cook's defense of formal theory is summarized in the following passages. He argues that it is essentially wrong [to regard]the musictheoristas a would-besocialscientist,as someone who observeswhat people do and attemptsto formulateexplanations of why they do what they do. Now it is undeniablethat, if musictheorists are social scientists,then they are generallyvery bad ones, in that they produceexplanationsof people'sresponsesto musicwithoutever properlyestablishingthe factsof the matter.Butfew musictheoristsdo in fact regardthemselvesas socialscientists,and this is becausetheydo not attemptto stand, as it were, outsidethe phenomenonof music in order to observeit in a detachedand objectivemanner,as a scientist would aim to do. By and large,musictheoristsregardthemselvesnot as theoristsin a scientificsense, but as musicians:the purposeof their formulationsand explanationsof musicalphenomenais to contribute to the musical culturewithin which they work. And if one sees the thinkingof musictheorists- and indeedof musiciansin general- as an intrinsicpartof a musicalculture,thenthe divergencebetweenthe way in which musicis thoughtaboutandthe way in which it is experienced will turnout to be not a failing,but rathera definingattributeof musical culture,[pp. 69-70] [Theorists]are in some senseinvolvedin the productionof music,and theircriticismsand theirtheorizingare an integralpart of the productional process,[p. 3] Cook's portrayal is problematic, not so much for what it says; but for what is leaves unsaid. Like music theory and criticism, scientific music research influences musical culture both directlyand indirectly.In recent years, psychomusicology, ethnomusicology, and other systematic disciplines have approached and perhaps overtaken music theory and analysis in capturing the interest of practicing musicians. Today, contemporary composers, performers, and serious music listeners are as apt to read works on the psychology or sociology of music as to read works of music analysis or theory. Nor is the influence of the social sciences on musical culture merely an incidental by-product of a purely descriptive enterprise. Although social sciences begin by endeavoring to provide a neutral description of things as
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they are, a large cohort of social scientists are overtly committed to changing the world. Clinical psychologists, therapists, and social workers are merely the most visible practitioners of social and psychological change (for better or worse). In short, Cook's contrasting of music theory with scientific approaches to music leaves the false impression that music theory is a part of musical culture, whereas systematic musicology is not. Of course such an argument will hinge on how one defines musical culture. Again and again, Cook reiterates his conception: "at the core of this book lies the proposition that a musical culture is, in essence, a repertoire of means for imagining music" [p. 4]. The question here is why Cook would define musical culture in such a limited way. Alternative definitions are legion. For example, musical culture might be defined as all the ways by which music is valued by a given group of people. Or musical culture might be regarded as a shared set of sonic experiences that contributes to a sense of group identity. Or musical culture might be defined as a common repertoire of musical experiences, and so forth. The reason Cook defines musical culture in this way is that he wants to argue that music theory is an imaginative rather than explanatory discipline and that the primary value of music theory is cultural. The logic is patently circular. If theory is primarily an imaginative rather than descriptive enterprise, then if we define musical culture as essentially imaginative, then theory continues to be central and germane.1This circular logic also serves to buttress the unfortunate yet widespread view that scientifically inspired investigations of music are really peripheral to the proper business of music scholarship. A related difficulty in Cook's portrayal is the emphasis on music theorists as musicians. Throughout the book, Cook uses the word "musician" as a synonym for music theorist (see for example, the opening pages). However, the most common complaint one hears from music theorists is the difficulty they have convincing practicing musicians of the musical pertinence of their work. In this regard, the disposition of most performers is similar to that of most listeners- to modify Cook's terminology, practicing musicians tend toward "musical"ratherthan "musicological" performance. A further problem with Cook's account is his portrayal of music theory as an enterprise uninterested in establishing what he calls "the facts of the matter." This is simply revisionist history. There is hardly a music theorist 1. Despite Cook's repeated emphasis on the above definition of culture, at one point, Cook himself lapses into offering a quite different definition of culture: "musical culture, like any other, is in essence no more and no less than a body of knowledge shared between culture-members" [p. 242]. This definition is much broader and leaves room not only for "imaginative knowledge," but for "facts of the matter" knowledge as well.
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before 1900 who would not have thought they were trying to tell the truth about music. Even many contemporary theorists will disagree with the view that music theory is not a discipline whose aim is to understand how music actually works. Cook's view is also problematic in that he places no constraints on music theory. Because music theories are imaginative cultural artifacts, they are not expected to correspond to any reality- indeed, if they did have such a correspondence, they would cease to have any cultural import, according to Cook. By removing theorizing from any discipline of verisimilitude, Cook, in effect, sanctions any kind of gobbledygook that can gain some currency in music circles as valid theorizing. But no theorist can truly believe that their analysis of a work is merely an act of fiction, unless they hold an entirely cynical disrespect for the analytic methods they use. Theorists may believe the methods to be flawed in various ways, but they cannot apply such methods with integrity if they believe the method to have no relationship to reality. Nor need this reality be limited to perceptual concomitants. Cook makes a common mistake in equating the application of science to music with the discipline of music psychology - and in particular,the more limited field of music perception. Science provides a set of methodological heuristics for testing any type of hypothesis; it does not matter whether the hypothesis is psychological, historical, formal, or whatever. Claims about the organization of music can be tested scientifically, even if there are no perceptual or psychological phenomena involved. More pointedly, empirical methods can be applied to hypotheses concerning the generative or conceptual origin of a work- a fact that Cook curiously overlooks. It is true, as Cook points out, that not all musical phenomena should be understood or evaluated from a perceptual point of view. As in the case of human speech, patterns of organization may reflect idiomatic aspects of the means of production (including social constraints) and have little to do with perception. But generative accounts of music are no less susceptible to empirical inquiry than receptive theories. For example, a theory concerning the influence of kinesthetic factors in the repertoire for the Chinese qin can be tested in the same way that the perceptibility of retrograde pitch can be tested. Similarly,Forte'sformal claim that the first movement of Brahms's String Quartet op. 51 no. 1 is organized around the interval-class pattern (2,1) can be tested scientifically- independent of the question of whether the set-theoretic structures are perceptible. Even literary poetic images can be tested empirically. In as yet unpublished work, John Roeder has shown how Schumann's programmatic stories (evoked by Schubert's German Dances, op. 33) correlate strongly with concrete featuresin Schubert'smusic. It would appear that even poetic and imaginative descriptions of music may be susceptible to empirical investigation.
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This oversight accounts for much of the confusion in Chapter 2 noted earlier. Cook indeed shows that there are innumerable ways of conceiving of music (kinesthetic, visual, etc.) that are unrelated to perception but still exhibit systematic properties. If you believe that the application of science to music theory is limited to auditory perception, then the chapter shows that there are important organizational aspects of music that transcend scientific investigation. But this is clearly wrong. In fact, the chapter demonstrates the reverse of what is intended. By showing the wealth of musical phenomena that exist apart from perception, Cook merely points out how much awaits the attention of the music scientist. Nor is human imagination itself isolated from scientific inquiry. Experimental methods can be used to probe innumerable aspects of human imagination, including kinematic, visual, poetic, imagistic, programmatic, and other forms, the longevity, flexibility, vividness, communicability, suggestibility, characteristicpatterns of imagining, the facility of moving from image to image, the plausibility of certain kinds of images, and so on. In short, even were it the case that music theory dealt only with imaginative thinking about music rather than with musical experience, this hypothetical discipline would not be safe from the zealous probing of systematic musicologists. On the surface, Cook's work is a spirited critique of music theory and analysis in the face of growing illuminations from scientific and scientifically inspired inquiry. But Cook's careful criticisms are undermined by his apparent reluctance to offend some theorists. Placed in its wider argument, the book is a sober and chilling defense of methodological mediocrity in certain practices in music theory and analysis. Cook's reconception of music theory as solely an imaginative discipline ultimately impoverishes the whole enterprise. This is surely unintentional on Cook's part. I do not see how it is possible to paint the disciplines of music theory and analysis with such a broad brush. Music theory has provided, and will continue to provide, a rich source of ideas and insights about music. It will continue to generate sensitive, detailed, and profound observations of musical experience. Virtually all of these ideas will ultimately be amenable to experimental investigation, and so will ultimately attract systematic exploration and elucidation. Some theoretical claims will prove to be fanciful and unfounded; similarly, some experimental results will fall by the wayside as theorists provide more refined or compelling accounts. Finally, consider for a moment if the tables were turned. If a contemporary psychologically inspired theory of music were demonstrably false, I doubt that music scholars would refrain from condemning it simply because the theory could be justified as a contribution to "our rich intellectual culture." It is true that even wrong theories are part of culture. Galean medicine, for example, is an integral part of medieval European history;
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our knowledgeof this medievalbeliefcan help us understandperiodliterarymetaphors,and makesfor a colorfulcharacterizationof an age. Butwe valueGaleanmedicaltheoryprimarilyfor what is says of a culturalperiod, and less for what is says about medicine. Ultimately,Cook's vision of music theory is sadly desolate.Having argued that theoristsare largelyincompetentin establishingthe facts of musical organizationand experience,he holds out the emptyhope that theorists are reallyfiction writersin drag.This assessmentwill appealonly to those scholars who hold strong to the more nihilistic interpretationof - that thereis no possibilityof explanationanyway. postmodernism Finally,I cannot end this review on such a critical note. Despite my disagreementwith the largerargument,Music,Imagination,and Culture remainsa first-classwork. In the firstinstance,the readercannot help but be impressedby Cook'scommandof the literaturesin musictheory,analysis, aesthetics,andpsychology.Timeandagainhis argumentsarebuttressed by lucid musicalexamples,or revealingjuxtapositionsof quotationsfrom well-known scholars. There are some 50-odd musical examples from Gregorianchant to Ligeti.Cook'sphenomenologicaland introspectiveaccounts are vivid and sometimesenchanting.His spiritedcritiquesof the perceptualvacuousnessof certainmusic theoreticconcepts and his penchantfor runninginformalexperimentswith his studentsareapt to endear Cook to psychomusicologists. Music,Imagination,and Cultureis a superbbook that ought to he read by all scholarswho care aboutthe state of musicresearch.Its criticismsof conventionaltheorydemandcarefulattention- especiallyby theoriststhemselves. However,I fear that Cook himselfhas underestimatedthe magnitude of his own critique.If what he says is true, music theory is in deep trouble.2 David Huron Humanities in the Research Assisted Center for Computer References Cook, N. (1987). The perception of large-scale tonal closure. Music Perception, 5(2), 197205. Frances, R. (1988). The perception of music. (W.J. Dowling, Trans.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gotlieb, H., ÔCKonecni, V. J. (1985). The effects of instrumentation, playing style, and structure in the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Music Perception, 3(1), 87-102. 2. Address correspondence to David Huron, Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1.
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Millar, J. K. (1984). The aural perception of pitch-class set relations: A computer-assisted investigation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, North Texas State University, Demon.
Thomas J. Tighe & W. Jay Dowling (Eds.), Psychology and Music: The Understanding of Melody and Rhythm. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1993, 228 + viii pp. $24.50 (paper) Great, could this be another book in collaboration with Jay Dowling following up a decade later on the book that inspired me to study the psychology of music (Dowling & Harwood, 1986)? Oh no, another collection of isolated chapters written by eminent scientists on their particular fields of research, with little or no confrontation or collaboration between them. These were my two initial reactions to this book, which kept on reappearing, fighting for dominance, as I progressed through the text. The preface announces that "this volume grew out of a symposium organized by the editors several years ago with the intent to inform interested colleagues from other scientific disciplines of the fascinating new developments in the scientific study of music perception and cognition. The idea was to make accessible to an audience outside the field of specialization advances in our understanding of the biological and psychological bases of music perception. This symposium prompted the idea of a similar mode of communication to a still larger audience, resulting in this book." So let us state clearly what this book is not. It does not present an integrated theory of the understanding of melody and rhythm. It is not an exhaustive review of the literature on those topics that are explored. It is not a forum for presenting original ideas or results. It does, however, constitute a collection of papers by experts in the field, each of which examines a particular subdomain in a language and style that should be accessible to any reader who has an interest in both psychology and music. The more familiar the reader is with one of these two areas, the easier will be the reading. Each chapter stands on its own, most being well constructed and presenting a story in a way that inspires the reader to continue reading in order to find the answer to the puzzle. Indeed, several chapters (in particular those by Dowling, Bartlett, and Trehub) would make an ideal basis for an introductory course on music psychology. The way the individual chapters are organized is coherent. The first section is devoted to "Exploration in Melody and Tonal Framework," comprising three chapters that investigate the perception of melodies, concentrating on the role of interval size and order, melodic contour, and tonal structure, and ignoring other possible influences such as rhythm, timbre, or harmony (Dowling, Cuddy, and Bartlett). The second section investigates "The Integration of Melody and Rhythm" by presenting two similar
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