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Okay, I apologize for the long hiatus. Now that winter and the associated Hand Issues are over, perhaps more postings! Okay, now I have to tell you about This Book.
I haven't been as excited about a book in a long time (since, I think, Bujold) as I have been about reading David Huron's Sweet Anticipation, a book on cognitive psychology in music (with a particular thesis dealing with anticipation and prediction). I bought this book off of a rec in Nature-- the first time I've ever done that, and the first time I've bought a book without having read any sort of sample of the contents in quite some time. And wow, did it pay off.
I LOVE Huron's book. I find it very clear and thoughtful, and not knowing anything about either advanced music theory (I took a year, so I know how to harmonize chorales and play a figured bass, but not much more than that) or pyschology or experimental musical psychology, this book was a revelation. It is also (as far as I can tell from a somewhat superficial reading) a really logical and satisfyingly scientific book. Huron systematically builds up both a very interesting picture of how we perceive music as well as the book's overriding thesis on how expectation shapes our view of music, starting with very simple subjects (do we expect notes to go up or down from the present note?) and progressing to the more complex (what pitches do we expect? What chords do we expect? What is our expectation of the musical schema?), and he backs everything up with experiments. He'll describe a hypothesis, describe an experiment to test it, discuss the result, and then discuss the possible loopholes or alternate hypotheses vindicated by the experiment. Can I tell you how much I love that? When he indulges in wild speculation (which he occasionally does), he says so. He clearly delineates what his book does and doesn't cover, and pretty much sticks to it (if anything, he delivers more than what he promises). Oh, man.
(One caveat is that I felt that his main thesis-- that laughter, awe, and frisson can all be explained as a consequence of anticipation and surprise-- could have been elaborated a bit-- he talks about the effect of surprise, but does not explicitly consider surprise in the context of certainty (though he does consider this implicitly), and I think that would be really fascinating to look at. PDQ Bach, whom he cites, is funny not just because he transgresses our anticipation, but because the very transgression is incorporated into the music in a seamless way that does answer our expectations. But the fact that he engaged me enough that I was thinking of this sort of thing is really, I think, a point in his favor.)
Having said this, I hardly dare recommend this book to anyone else. You do need, ideally, at least some music background-- his ideal reader would be able to read music (many of the figures are given in musical notation, although I think he says there are sound clips on the web as well) and have at least a nodding acquaintance with simple music theory (if you don't know what a dominant chord is it may be a bit of a slog). Also, I could see how it might be a dry read if you're used to pop psych books. Although you don't need a science background to read the book (he talks about concepts like information in a way where he doesn't have to use any math) he never plays cute or dumbs down things in a way that masks rigor, and if you're used to that, well, you won't like this book.
Speaking of which, I then went to the library and checked out Daniel Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music, which although treating somewhat similar material is basically the opposite of Huron's book. I'm too disgusted with it to even bother taking the energy to give it a proper rant, but... he lost me early in the first chapter when he declared that pitch is a "purely mental construction." Umm... what? Hello, there are these things called frequencies? He later clarifies this (sort of) to say that he really means that what we experience in our brains as pitch is mental even though sound waves are physical, though I think this is kind of a content-free statement-- you might as well say that everything in our brains (and in particular, everything to do with music-- rhythm, harmony, dynamics) is a purely mental construction, which is trivially true and not at all helpful. Sloppy! It just gets worse from there. The whole thing is sloppy. He doesn't define things properly, he meanders along basically boasting about himself, he talks about random evolutionary theories of music without really drawing a distinction between wild speculation and experimentally-justified results, and he caps it by saying he doesn't want to listen to Wagner because he's worried that Wagner's evil thought processes will somehow get lodged in his brain. I mean, please!
ase made for me! Yay!)Okay, I apologize for the long hiatus. Now that winter and the associated Hand Issues are over, perhaps more postings! Okay, now I have to tell you about This Book.
I haven't been as excited about a book in a long time (since, I think, Bujold) as I have been about reading David Huron's Sweet Anticipation, a book on cognitive psychology in music (with a particular thesis dealing with anticipation and prediction). I bought this book off of a rec in Nature-- the first time I've ever done that, and the first time I've bought a book without having read any sort of sample of the contents in quite some time. And wow, did it pay off.
I LOVE Huron's book. I find it very clear and thoughtful, and not knowing anything about either advanced music theory (I took a year, so I know how to harmonize chorales and play a figured bass, but not much more than that) or pyschology or experimental musical psychology, this book was a revelation. It is also (as far as I can tell from a somewhat superficial reading) a really logical and satisfyingly scientific book. Huron systematically builds up both a very interesting picture of how we perceive music as well as the book's overriding thesis on how expectation shapes our view of music, starting with very simple subjects (do we expect notes to go up or down from the present note?) and progressing to the more complex (what pitches do we expect? What chords do we expect? What is our expectation of the musical schema?), and he backs everything up with experiments. He'll describe a hypothesis, describe an experiment to test it, discuss the result, and then discuss the possible loopholes or alternate hypotheses vindicated by the experiment. Can I tell you how much I love that? When he indulges in wild speculation (which he occasionally does), he says so. He clearly delineates what his book does and doesn't cover, and pretty much sticks to it (if anything, he delivers more than what he promises). Oh, man.
(One caveat is that I felt that his main thesis-- that laughter, awe, and frisson can all be explained as a consequence of anticipation and surprise-- could have been elaborated a bit-- he talks about the effect of surprise, but does not explicitly consider surprise in the context of certainty (though he does consider this implicitly), and I think that would be really fascinating to look at. PDQ Bach, whom he cites, is funny not just because he transgresses our anticipation, but because the very transgression is incorporated into the music in a seamless way that does answer our expectations. But the fact that he engaged me enough that I was thinking of this sort of thing is really, I think, a point in his favor.)
Having said this, I hardly dare recommend this book to anyone else. You do need, ideally, at least some music background-- his ideal reader would be able to read music (many of the figures are given in musical notation, although I think he says there are sound clips on the web as well) and have at least a nodding acquaintance with simple music theory (if you don't know what a dominant chord is it may be a bit of a slog). Also, I could see how it might be a dry read if you're used to pop psych books. Although you don't need a science background to read the book (he talks about concepts like information in a way where he doesn't have to use any math) he never plays cute or dumbs down things in a way that masks rigor, and if you're used to that, well, you won't like this book.
Speaking of which, I then went to the library and checked out Daniel Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music, which although treating somewhat similar material is basically the opposite of Huron's book. I'm too disgusted with it to even bother taking the energy to give it a proper rant, but... he lost me early in the first chapter when he declared that pitch is a "purely mental construction." Umm... what? Hello, there are these things called frequencies? He later clarifies this (sort of) to say that he really means that what we experience in our brains as pitch is mental even though sound waves are physical, though I think this is kind of a content-free statement-- you might as well say that everything in our brains (and in particular, everything to do with music-- rhythm, harmony, dynamics) is a purely mental construction, which is trivially true and not at all helpful. Sloppy! It just gets worse from there. The whole thing is sloppy. He doesn't define things properly, he meanders along basically boasting about himself, he talks about random evolutionary theories of music without really drawing a distinction between wild speculation and experimentally-justified results, and he caps it by saying he doesn't want to listen to Wagner because he's worried that Wagner's evil thought processes will somehow get lodged in his brain. I mean, please!
