Musical Grammar and the Study of Cognitive Processes of Composition

Abstract

The concept of “grammar” is at the basis both of listening to and of composing music. Music grammar includes morphology and syntax, the former being defined as the identification of different categories of musical structures, the latter as that of rules connecting morphological unities. In listening to music morphology corresponds to “categorical” perception and syntax to “structural” perception. In composing and in music analysis, the intuitive procedures of perceptions must be transformed in explicitly rational knowledge: morphology corresponds to a clear definition of musical concepts and syntax to that of musical rules. According to the theory, morphology and syntax correspond to actual cognitive processes; however a distinction is made between a grammar, and its uses, that is, its applications in composing and listening activities. Some critical remarks on this point are made in respect of the tradition of cognitive studies. A further aspect of grammar is then underlined: the distinction between syntactic and semantic rules. The aim of both of these is to build expressive structures which can be understood and interpreted by means of socially legitimated hermeneutic conventions. In this sense grammar is to be conceived of not only as a psychic, but also as a social instrument. In order to understand the mental procedures of composition, all the methods so far proposed risk remaining at the surface of the problems to which they are applied unless they are integrated into amore accurate and adequate consideration of grammatical thinking.