The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music

the most expected ending (melodic or diatonic incongruities). Thus, we created a degree of
musical incongruity from diatonic to nondiatonic.
Results clearly showed that both types of unexpected notes elicited the occurrence of late
positive components, peaking around 600 ms (P600). As demonstrated for the N400 com-
ponent, P600 amplitude was shown to depend on the degree of musical incongruity: it was
larger for the most unexpected, nondiatonic wrong notes than for the less unexpected, dia-
tonic incongruities. Moreover, the amplitude of the P600 was larger for familiar than for
unfamiliar musical phrases and for musicians than for nonmusicians (Figure 18.3). These
findings clearly demonstrate not only that specific notes are expected within a musical
phrase, but also that such expectations depend on the familiarity of the musical excerpts
and the expertise of the listener. Thus, an interesting similarity between language and
music, just mentioned, their ability to generate strong expectancies, is supported by empir-
ical evidence. However, our results also show that the processes that govern semantic
expectancy and that are reflected by a negative component, peaking around 400 ms, the
N400, are qualitatively different from those involved in musical expectancies and reflected
by a positive component peaking around P600 ms, the P600. While, to our knowledge, the
functional significance of positive vs negative polarities in the ERPs is not clearly estab-
lished, our results, by demonstrating qualitative differences between language and music
processing, nevertheless strongly argue for the specificity of the processes involved in com-
puting the semantic aspects of language. Thus, one of the most important differences
between language and music, outlined in the introduction, the fact that, in contrast to lan-
guage, music has no intrinsic meaning and is a self-referential system, seems to find some
support in these experimental findings.

Semantics and harmony in opera

Opera is perhaps the most complete art form, as it calls upon music, language, drama, and
choreography. It originated in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century with Dafne,set to

     279

Figure 18.2Examples of the stimuli used in the experiment. (Adapted from Ref. 69.)

Familiar melody

‘To réador’, Carmen, Bizet (1838–75) Congruous

Nondiatonic

Nondiatonic

Diatonic

Rhythmic

Diatonic

Rhythmic

600 ms

600 ms

Congruous

Unfamiliar melody

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