The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

nonmusicians process melodies in opposite hemispheres.The idea that

perception and comprehension of music are based on general mecha-

nisms and are not related to delimited neuronal circuits thus remains

plausible as soon as we consider the level of the musical phrase,and even

more,that of the whole musical piece.But this largely destroys the idea

of musical competence in the sense of generative theories inspired by

Chomsky,at least when construed as modular grammars.Actually,

Lerdahl and Jackendoff presented their GTTM partly as a modular

system,at least as a possible model of a system that could be imple-

mented in neural terms.Nothing allows us to say so,not only because we

lack knowledge of the existence of such circuits in the human brain,but

also because the model is restricted to tonal music,and we are capable

of understanding and appreciating other types of music.

The Question of Atonal Music

This brings us to the second direction in which we can try to break the

epistemological circle that closes in on the cognitive psychology of music:

to try to validate certain properties of the GTTM concerning atonal

music.I am struck by the fact that young researchers in cognitive psy-

chology of music still shy away from addressing problems related to

atonal music.More specifically,I think a certain number of problems

related to the perception and memory of music are formulated in a

restrictive and exclusive manner,since the models used do not permit

formalizations other than those that apply to tonal music.I will not

develop here what I described elsewhere in detail (Imberty 1987,1991a,

b,1993a,b).Lerdahl himself attempted this in 1989,showing the role that

contextual salience could have in the organization of atonal music as a

substitute for prolongation structures in tonal music.This can be pre-

sented in the following manner.The whole of the GTTM is based on the

hypothesis of a certain equivalence between the musical piece’s struc-

ture as it is described and the psychological need for hierarchical orga-

nization in perception and memory.This presents a problem for atonal

music.More particularly,this difficulty concerns the structure of prolon-

gational reductions.

In fact,these are clearly defined only because the GTTM is based on

the definition of stability conditions of certain groups in relation to

others,both melodically and harmonically.First,alternations between

strong and weak tonal events are organized in a hierarchy that makes

harmonically,melodically,or rhythmically strong events stable.These

events determine the possibilities for prolongation by their functional

predominance in the tonal system.But in fact this condition implies

another condition:interaction of temporal webs (rhythmic-melodic

organizations of reduction structures based on these alternations) and

455 Innate Competencies in Musical Communication