Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

Krumhansl’s (1990) internalization hypothesis is one of many classical accounts
that have descended from Leonard Meyer’s account of musical meaning arising from
emotions manipulated by expectation (Meyer, 1956). “Styles in music are basically
complex systems of probability relationships” (p. 54). Indeed, a tremendous variety
of musical characteristics can be captured by applying Bayesian models, including
rhythm and metre, pitch and melody, and musical style (Temperley, 2007). A great
deal of evidence also suggests that expectations about what is to come next are critical
determinants of human music perception (Huron, 2006). Temperley argues that
classical models of music perception (Lerdahl, 2001; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;
Temperley, 2001) make explicit these probabilistic relationships. “Listeners’ generative
models are tuned to reflect the statistical properties of the music that they
encounter” (Temperley, 2007, p. 207).
It was earlier argued that there are distinct parallels between Austro-German
classical music and the classical approach to cognitive science. One of the most
compelling is that both appeal to abstract, formal structures. It would appear that
the classical approach to musical cognition takes this parallel very literally. That is,
the representational systems proposed by classical researchers of musical cognition
internalize the formal properties of music, and in turn they impose this formal
structure on sounds during the perception of music.
6.3 Musical Romanticism and Connectionism
The eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution produced profound changes in the
nature of European life, transferring power and wealth from the nobility to the
commercial class (Plantinga, 1984). Tremendous discontentment with the existing
social order, culminating in the French revolution, had a profound influence on
political, intellectual, and artistic pursuits. It led to a movement called Romanticism
(Claudon, 1980), which roughly spanned the period from the years leading up to the
1789 French revolution through to the end of the nineteenth century.
A precise definition of Romanticism is impossible, for it developed at different
times in different countries, and in different arts—first poetry, then painting,
and finally music (Einstein, 1947). Romanticism was a reaction against the
reason and rationality that characterized the Enlightenment period that preceded
it. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the irrational, and the imaginative.
Arguably music provided Romanticism’s greatest expression (Einstein, 1947;
Plantinga, 1984), because music expressed mystical and imaginative ideas that
could not be captured by language.
It is impossible to provide a clear characterization of Romantic music
(Einstein, 1947; Longyear, 1988; Plantinga, 1984; Whittall, 1987). “We seek in vain
an unequivocal idea of the nature of ‘musical Romanticism’” (Einstein, 1947, p. 4).
280 Chapter 6