Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

German

Spanish

French

Italian

This study conducted a perceptual analysis of an excerpt from Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata in four experiments. The experiments were followed by an application of Lerdahl's (2001) Tonal Pitch Space theory, or TPS, to perceptual judgments of musical tension over the course of the excerpt. In the experiments, data were obtained for each of 15 time points corresponding to the 15 successive sonorities in the excerpt. Listeners in the first three experiments were piano students who learned and performed the excerpt before participating in the experimental tasks. In Experiment 1, judgments of phrase structure permitted examination of the perceptual segmentation of the excerpt. In Experiment 2, probe-tone ratings (Krumhansl and Kessler, 1982) were used to derive both a measure of perceived distance traveled in key space as well as a measure of temporal orientation — the degree to which listening at each time point was retrospective or prospective. In Experiment 3, a tension contour over the 15 time points was derived from listeners' continuous responding to perceived tension throughout the excerpt. In Experiment 4, judgments of consonance/dissonance for each sonority, isolated from context and presented in random order in a randomly selected transposition, were obtained from piano students unfamiliar with the excerpt. Strong correspondences were found between the perceptual measures and related music-theoretic predictors generated from TPS. The tension contour was regressed on TPS predictors. Both sensitivity to hierarchical structure and expectancies arising from voice leading, as well as the overall melodic contour, significantly contributed to the prediction of perceived tension.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bent

(1987). Analysis. New York; W. W. Norton.

Bharucha

J. J.

(1984). Anchoring effects in music: The resolution of dissonance. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 485–518.

Bharucha

J. J.

(1996). Melodic anchoring. Music Perception, 13, 383–400.

Bigand

(2003). Travelling through Lerdahl's Tonal Pitch Space Theory: A psychological perspective. Music Scientie, this issue.

Bigand

Parncutt

. (1999). Perceiving musical tension in long chord sequences. Psychological Research, 62, 237–54.

Bigand

Parncutt

Lerdahl

(1996). The perception of musical tension in short chord sequences: The influence of harmonic function, sensory dissonance, horizontal motion, and musical training. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 125–41.

Cuddy

L. L.

(1991/92). Melodic patterns and tonal structure: converting evidence.

Psychomusicology, 10, 107–26.

Cuddy

L. L.

Smith

N. A.

(2000). The perception of tonal pitch space and tonal tension. In Greer

(Ed.), Musicology and sister disciplines: Past, present and future (pp. 47–59). London: Oxford.

10.

Cuddy

L. L.

Thompson

W. E.

(1992). Asymmetry of perceived key movement in chorale sequences: Converging evidence from a probe-tone analysis. Psychological Research, 54, 51–9.

11.

Huron

Parncutt

. (1993). An improved model of tonality perception incorporating pitch salience and echoic memory. Psychomusicology, 12, 154–71.

12.

Hutchinson

Knopoff

. (1978). The acoustical component of Western consonance. Interface, 7, 1–29.

13.

Jones

M. R.

(1987). Dynamic pattern structure in music: Recent theory and research. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 621–34.

14.

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1979). The psychological representation of musical pitch in a tonal context. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 346–74.

15.

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1990). Cognitive foundations of musical pitch. New York: Oxford.

16.

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1996). A perceptual analysis of Mozart's piano sonata K. 282: Segmentation, tension, and musical ideas. Music Perception, 13, 401–32.

17.

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1997). Effects of perceptual organization and musical form on melodic expectancies. In Leman

(Ed.), Music, gestalt and computing (pp. 294–320). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.

18.

Krumhansl

C. L.

Kessler

E. J.

(1982). Tracing the dynamic changes in perceived tonal organization in a spatial representation of musical keys. Psychological Review, 89, 334–68.

19.

Krumhansl

C. L.

Schmuckler

M. A.

(1986). The Petroushka Chord: A perceptual investigation. Music Perception, 4, 153–84.

20.

Krumhansl

C. L.

Shepard

R. N.

(1979). Quantification of the hierarchy of tonal functions within a diatonic context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 579–94.

21.

Lerdahl

(1988). Tonal pitch space. Music Perception, 5, 315–50.

22.

Lerdahl

(1996). Calculating tonal tension. Music Perception, 13, 319–63.

23.

Lerdahl

(2001). Tonal pitch space. Oxford: OUP.

24.

Lerdahl

Jackendoff

. (1983). A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

25.

London

(2002). Tonal pitch space by Fred Lerdahl. Music Perception, 20, 203–18.

26.

Madsen

C. K.

Frederickson

W. E.

(1993). The experience of musical tension: A replication of Nielsen's research using the continuous response digital interface. Journal of Music Therapy, 30, 46–63.

27.

Meyer

(1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

28.

Meyer

(1967). Music, the arts, and ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

29.

Narmour

(1990). The analysis and cognition of basic melodic structures: The implication-realization model Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

30.

Oram

Cuddy

L. L.

(1995). Responsiveness of Western adults to pitch-distributional information in melodic sequences. Psychological Research, 57, 103–18.

31.

Palmer

(1996). Anatomy of a performance: Sources of musical expression. Music Perception, 13, 433–53.

32.

Palmer

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1987a). Independent temporal and pitch structures in determination of musical phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 116–26.

33.

Palmer

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1987b). Pitch and temporal contributions to musical phrase perception: Effects of harmony, performance timing, and familiarity. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 505–18.

34.

Parncutt

(1989). Harmony: A psychoacoustical approach. Berlin:Springer-Verlag.

35.

Russo

F. A.

Cuddy

L. L.

(2002). Variability in musical pitch perception across the piano range. Manuscript in preparation.

36.

Schmuckler

M. A.

Tomovski

. (1997). Perceptual tests of musical key finding. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Philadelphia, PA.

37.

Schubert

(2001). Continuous measurement of self-report emotional response to music. In Juslin

P. N.

Sloboda

J. A.

(Eds), Music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. 393–414). London, England: Oxford University Press.

38.

Shepard

R. N.

(1964). Circularity in judgments of relative pitch. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 32, 2346–53.

39.

Smith

C. J.

(1986). The functional extravagance of chromatic chords. Music Theory Spectrum, 8, 94–139.

40.

Smith

N. A.

Schmuckler

M. A.

(2000). Pitch-distributional effects on the perception of tonality. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Keele, UK.

41.

Smith

N. A.

Schmuckler

M. A.

(2003). The perception of tonal structure by the differentiation and organization of pitches. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Perceptions of Musical Dimensions in Beethoven's Waldsiein Sonata: An Application of Tonal Pitch Space Theory

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References