This contribution is about music cognition in real-time listening. Starting from the distinction between knowledge-by-acquaintance as against conceptual knowledge, it argues for a definition of music listening as an ongoing process of sense-making that relies on epistemic interactions with the sounds. In order to provide a theoretical framework to assess this process of sense-making, it brings together conceptual and operational tools from the domains of deixis, cue abstraction, route-description and cognitive maps. Basically in this combined approach is the construction of knowledge through the ‘extraction’ and ‘abstraction’ of salient elements from the articulation of sounds through time. This articulation can be continuous or discrete, but is possible to deal with the sounding elements in a propositional way, relying on principles of cognitive economy rather than on the richness of full sensory experience.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AndersonJ. R. (1983). Architecture of cognition.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CarianiP. (1991). Some epistemological implications of devices which construct their own sensors and effectors. In VarelaF., & BourgineP. (Eds.), Towards a practice of autonomous systems. Proceedings of the First European Workshop on Artificial Life (pp. 484–493). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6.
CarianiP. (2003). Cybernetic systems and the semiotics of translation. In PetrilliS. (Ed.), Translation translation (pp. 349–367). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
7.
DeliègeI. (1987). Grouping conditions in listening to music: An approach to Lerdahl & Jackendoff's grouping preference rules.Music Perception, 4, 325–360.
8.
DeliègeI. (1989). L'organisation psychologique de l'écoute de la musique: Des marques de sédimentation - indices et empreinte - dans la représentation mentale de l'œuvre. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Liège.
9.
DeliègeI. (1992). Recognition of the Wagnerian Leitmotiv - Experimental study based on an excerpt from ‘Das Rheingold”. In BehneK.-E., KleinenG., & de la Motte-HaberH. (Eds.), Musikpsychologie. Empirische Forschungen - Ästhetische Experimente (pp. 25–55). Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel.
DeweyJ. (1958 [1934]). Art as experience, New York: Capricorn Books.
12.
DownsR. & SteaD. (1973). Cognitive maps and spatial behaviour: Process and products. In DownsR., & SteaD. (Eds.), Image and environment (pp. 8–26). ChicagoAldine.
13.
FillmoreCh. (1972). Ansätze zu einer Theorie der Deixis. In KieferF. (Ed.), Semantik und generative Grammatik. I. (pp. 147–174). Frankfurt/M: Athenäum Verlag.
14.
FillmoreCh. (1982). Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis. In JarvellaR., & KleinW. (Eds.), Speech, place, and action. Studies in deixis and related topics (pp. 31–59). John Wiley: Chichester - New York.
15.
FleagleJ. (1999). Primate adaptation and evolution.San Diego: Academic Press.
16.
HaeckelE. (1988[1866]). Generelle Morphologie des Organismus, Bd. 2: Allgemeine Entwicklungsgeschichte.Berlin: de Gruyter.
17.
HusserlE. (1964[1905-1910]). The phenomenology of internal time-consciousness.The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
18.
IngoldT. (1992). Culture and the perception of the environment. In CrollE., & PartinD. (Eds.), Bush base: Forest farm (pp. 39–56). London: Routledge.
19.
JamesW. (1976[1912]). Essays in radical empiricism.Cambridge (Ma) - London: Harvard University Press.
20.
KitchinR. & JacobsonD. (1997). Techniques to collect and analyze the cognitive map knowledge of people with visual impairments or blindness: Issues of validity.Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, 91(4), 393–400.
21.
KleinW. (1982). Local Deixis in Route Directions. In JarvellaR. J., & KleinW., (Eds.), Speech, place and action. studies in deixis and related topics (pp. 161–182). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
KullK. (1998). On semiosis, Umwelt, and semiosphere.Semiotica, 120(3/4), 299–310.
24.
LangackerR. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar, Vol. 1.Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
25.
LaskeO. (1977). Music, memory and thought. Explorations in cognitive musicology.Ann Arbor, Profess MI: University Microfilms International.
26.
LewinD. (1986). Music theory, phenomenology, and modes of perception.Music Perception, 3, 327–392.
27.
MazetC. (1991). Fonctionnalité dans l'organisation catégorielle. In DuboisD. (Ed.), Sémantique et cognition. Catégories, prototypes, typicalité (pp. 88–100). Paris: Editions du CNRS.
28.
MillerI. (1984). Husserl, perception, and temporal awareness.Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
29.
MontelloD. (2002). Cognitive map-design research in the twentieth century: Theoretical and empirical approaches.Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 29, 3, 283–304.
30.
PatteeH. (1985). Universal principles of measurement and language functions in evolving systems. In CastiJ., & KarlqvistA. (Eds.), Complexity, language, and life: Mathematical approaches (pp. 268–281). Berlin: Springer Verlag.
31.
PiagetJ. (1967). Biologie et connaissance. Essai sur les relations entre les régulations organiques et les processus cognitifs.Paris: Gallimard.
32.
PinetteB. (1994). Image-based navigation through large-scale environments. PhD thesis. University of Massachussetts Amherst, Department of Computer Science.
33.
RameshsharmaR. & MowatD. (2001). Wayfinding in virtual environments using an interactive spatial cognitive map. In Proceedings of the “Fifth International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV 2001), July 25-27 (pp. 574–583). London, England.
34.
ReybrouckM. (2001). Biological roots of musical epistemology: Functional Cycles, Umwelt, and enactive listening.Semiotica, 134, 1-4, 599–633.
35.
ReybrouckM. (2004). Music cognition, semiotics and the experience of time. Ontosemantical and Epistemological Claims.Journal of New Music Research, 33(4), 411–428.
36.
ReybrouckM. (2005a). A biosemiotic and ecological approach to music cognition: Event perception between auditory listening and cognitive economy.Axiomathes. An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems, 15(2), 229–266.
37.
ReybrouckM. (2005b). Body, mind and music: musical semantics between experiential cognition and cognitive economy.Trans. Transcultural Music Review, 9 <http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/>
38.
ReybrouckM. (2006). Musical creativity between symbolic modelling and perceptual constraints: The role of adaptive behaviour and epistemic autonomy. In DeliègeI., & WigginsG. (Eds.), Musical creativity: Multidisciplinary research in theory and practice (pp. 42–59). Oxford: Psychology Press.
39.
ReybrouckM. (2009a). An experiential approach to musical semantics: Deixis, denotation and cognitive maps. In DeelyJ., & SbrocchiL. (Eds.), Semiotics 2008 (pp. 806–818). Ottawa: Legas.
40.
ReybrouckM. (2009b). Similarity perception as a cognitive tool for musical sense-making: deictic and ecological claims.Musicae Scientiae. Discussion Forum 4B, 99–118.
41.
RobinsonA. (1952). The look of maps.Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
42.
RosenR. (1978). Fundamentals of measurement and representation of natural systems.New York: North-Holland.
43.
TolmanE. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men.The Psychological Review, 55(4), 189–208.
44.
XenakisI. (1992). Formalized music: Thought and mathematics in composition.Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press.
