Michel Imberty

Abstract

In this chapter I examine the implications of a certain number of theories in the

domains of musical analysis and music cognition. The question of innate musical

competencies is addressed both in gestalt hypotheses taken up in Lerdahl and

Jackendoff’s generative theory of tonal music and in a certain number of biolog-

ical models. A dynamic theory of music perception has as its psychological basis

the development of elementary processes of communication, such as those that

appear in the infant in its social environment. Repetition, variation, and rhythm

in both games and speech, and cognitive-affective exchange, are at the origin of

temporal experiences that predispose human beings toward comprehension and

creation of musical activities. These structures and elementary processes of com-

munication can be said to be generated by competencies of the human species

that prepare one as much for social life as for an artistic and musical life.

Since the early 1990s cognitivism has invaded the field of the humani-

ties. Its objective is to present a coherent general theory of the totality

of human activities through more or less domain-specific competence

systems using a common set of functional rules. These competences,

which are very specific in their content but together form a coherent set,

are innate.

In this approach it is easy to recognize the basic ideas of Chomsky,

who in 1957 proposed the first formulation of his famous generative

grammar.Since then, the Chomskian approach has largely penetrated all

domains of psychology, first the field of psycholinguistics, then the field

of cognitive psychology, and today the field of music psychology. The

most recent developments have implications for our concept of music as

well as for our concept of the functioning of the human brain in general.

A few consequences of the cognitivist approach might well lead to a dead

end in our understanding of music.

Gestaltism

When we talk about the analogy between language and music, we think

naturally of the magnificent work of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) and

their generative theory of tonal music (GTTM). This work has renewed

our approach to musical analysis and has provided psychologists with

many new hypotheses. In particular, it has contributed to a more general

movement in psychology, namely, a return to the ideas and the experi-

mental paradigms of gestalt theory. In fact, the first work on the prop-

erties of forms, in 1890, was written by a certain von Ehrenfels regarding

melody (“the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” form is trans-

posable, etc.).

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The Question of Innate Competencies in

Musical Communication