and the absence of the musical piece’. Richard Strauss (1864–1949) even composed an
opera,Capriccio(1940), to illustrate the complementarity of words and music.
To determine, based on scientific grounds, if the words or the music is most important
when we listen to opera, we selected 200 excerpts from French operas of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.^72 Each excerpt lasted between 8 and 20 s and was sung a capellaby a
female singer under each of four experimental conditions, that is, the final word of the
excerpt was (1) semantically congruous and sung in tune, (2) semantically incongruous
and sung in tune, (3) semantically congruous and sung out of tune, and (4) both semanti-
cally incongruous and sung out of tune (Figure 18.4).
Based on previous results,^65 it was of interest to determine whether semantically incon-
gruous words will also elicit an N400 component when they are sung. Similarly, it was of
interest to determine whether congruous words sung out of tune will also elicit a P600
component.^69 Of most interest was the double incongruity condition: will semantically
incongruous words sung out of key elicit both an N400 and a P600 component? If language
plays the most important role when we listen to opera, then results may show an N400 but
not a P600. Conversely, if music is the cornerstone of opera, then results may show a P600
without an N400. Maybe both effects will be elicited, however; they may then be additive (i.e.
equal to the sum of the effect associated with each type of incongruity alone) or interactive.
To answer these questions, we recorded the ERPs associated with the final words of each
excerpt, from 16 professional musicians from the opera company in Marseille.
To summarize, results demonstrated that sung incongruous words did elicit an N400
component, thus extending to songs results previously reported for written and spoken
language65,73(Figure 18.5A). Moreover, words sung out of tune did elicit a P600 compo-
nent, thus extending to songs results previously reported for out-of-tune notes69,74–^76
(Figure 18.5B). Most interesting are the results in the double incongruity condition. They
show that incongruous words sung out of tune elicit both an N400 and a P600 component
(Figure 18.5C). Interestingly, the N400 occurred earlier than the P600, which is taken as
evidence that the words were processed faster than the music. Finally, effects in the double
incongruity condition were not significantly different from the sum of the effects observed
in each condition of simple incongruity (see Figure 18.6). This finding provides a strong
argument in favour of the independence (i.e. the additivity) of the computations involved
in processing the semantic aspects of language and the harmonic aspects of music.
Therefore, when we listen to opera, we process both the lyrics and the tunes in an inde-
pendent fashion, and language seems to be processed before music.
Influence of attention We tracked these results further by conducting another series of
experiments aimed at studying the effect of attention, again testing some professional
musicians from the opera company in Marseille.^76 We hypothesized that if lyrics and tunes
are processed independently, listeners should be able to focus their attention only on the
lyrics or only on the tunes, depending on the instructions. Without going into the details
of the results, an N400 component was elicited to sung incongruous words, and a P600 was
associated with congruous words sung out of tune, thus replicating our previous findings.^72
Most interestingly, the N400 to incongruous words completely vanished when participants
focused their attention on the music (Figure 18.7). Thus, musicians were able not to
process the meaning of words; they did not notice whether the terminal word made sense
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