Music and Memory: An Introduction

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 313 pages
• Published by: The MIT Press January 8, 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0262692376
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0262692373
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Product Description
This far-ranging book shows how human memory influences the organization of music. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents basic ideas about memory and perception from cognitive psychology and, to some extent, cognitive linguistics. Topics include auditory processing, perception, and recognition. The second part describes in detail how the concepts from the first part are exemplified in music. The presentation is based on three levels of musical experience: event fusion (the formation of single musical events from acoustical vibrations in the air, on a time scale too small to exhibit rhythm), melody and rhythm, and form. The focus in the latter is on the psychological conditions necessary for making large-scale--that is, formal--boundaries clear in music rather than on traditional musical forms. The book also discusses the idea that much of the language used to describe musical structures and processes is metaphorical. It encourages readers to consider the possibility that the process of musical composition can be "a metaphorical transformation of their own experience into sound."

The book also touches on unresolved debates about psychological musical universals, information theory, and the operation of neurons. It requires no formal musical training and contains a glossary and an appendix of listening examples.

About The Author
Bob Snyder is a composer and video artist and Chair of the Sound Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Music and Memory: An Introduction (Hardcover) Written textbook style, Snyder's Music and Memory surveys what was previously the largely disparate literature linking cognitive psychology, linguistics, music, neuroscience, and memory. Accessible to the beginner in this interdisciplinary field, Snyder takes effort to introduce musical concepts and terminology before moving to higher level analyses. However, the expert in this field will still find many interesting bits of information regarding current papers on music and memory in these introductory chapters. As the book progresses, the scale of the ideas becomes more grandiose, but Snyder manages to support his tenets about the brain and music well. The chapters are sometimes divided by topic (like rhythm, or syntactic hierarchy in music). This enormous undertaking succeeds admirably -- and even if you are not a cognitive musicologist, you will find many interesting bits of information about this book about why you remember that certain song you've heard on the radio or TV. A+++. Comment | | (Report this)