Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis (AMS Studies in Music) - Softcover

Zbikowski, Lawrence M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195187970 ISBN 13: 9780195187977

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2005

Synopsis

This book shows how recent work in cognitive science, especially that developed by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, can be used to explain how we understand music. The book focuses on three cognitive processes―categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models―and explores the part these play in theories of musical organization.

The first part of the book provides a detailed overview of the relevant work in cognitive science, framed around specific musical examples. The second part brings this perspective to bear on a number of issues with which music scholarship has often been occupied, including the emergence of musical syntax and its relationship to musical semiosis, the problem of musical ontology, the relationship between words and music in songs, and conceptions of musical form and musical hierarchy.

The book will be of interest to music theorists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists, as well as those with a professional or avocational interest in the application of work in cognitive science to humanistic principles.

About this title

Review

Zbikowski has written a book that bears comparison to some of the great works of psychologically oriented, humanistic music theory... This is a timely book... The writing is clear, the chapters address a surprisingly varied and valuable set of pieces, and Zbikowski dispenses with the cloying formalisms that too often make music theory impenetrable... This is a large, important book. (Robert Gjerdingen, The School of Music, Northwestern University)

Zbikowski embraces many discreet strands in the gamut of thought on music theory and cognitive psychology in this groundbreaking study. He provides a clear outline of each field of research, both historical and contemporary, before carefully weaving them together... Recommended. (Choice)

About the Author

Lawrence Zbikowski has taught music theory and analysis at the University of Chicago since 1993, and will be a visitor at Getty- CASBS research group on Cognition, Brain, and Art during the 2001-2002 academic year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0195187970
• ISBN 13: 9780195187977
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384