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

hid the underlying musical structures from the audience’s perception, the minimalists
desired to create a different kind of composition. When presented minimalist
compositions, the audience would hear the musical processes upon which
the pieces were built. Reich (2002, p. 34) said he was “interested in perceptible
processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding
music.”
Reich made processes perceptible by making them gradual. But this didn’t
make his compositions less musical.
Even when all the cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening
in a musical process, there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all. These
mysteries are the impersonal, unintended, psychoacoustic by-products of the
intended process. (Reich, 2002, p. 35)
Reich’s recognition that the listener contributes to the composition—that classical
music is a cool medium, not a hot one—is fundamental to minimalist music. Philip
Glass (1987) was surprised to find that he had different experiences of different performances
of Samuel Beckett’s Play, for which Glass composed music. He realized
that “Beckett’s Play doesn’t exist separately from its relationship to the viewer, who
is included as part of the play’s content” (p. 36). Audiences of Glass’ Einstein on the
Beach had similar experiences. “The point about Einstein was clearly not what it
‘meant’ but that it was meaningful as generally experienced by the people who saw
it” (p. 33).
Modern music has many parallels to embodied cognitive science, and has
many characteristics that distinguish it from other traditions of classical music.
Alternative views of composition, the role of the audience, and the control of a performance
are clearly analogous to embodied concepts such as emergence, embodiment,
and stigmergy. They also lead to a very different notion of the purpose of
music, in its transition from “hot” to “cool.” Not surprisingly, the radical differences
between classical and modern music are reflected in differences between classical
and embodied cognitive science’s study of musical cognition, as is discussed in the
next section.
6.6 The Embodied Approach to Musical Cognition
A well-established modern view of classical music is that it has meaning, and that
its purpose is to convey this meaning in a fashion that is consistent with Reddy’s
(1979) conduit metaphor.
Composers and performers of all cultures, theorists of diverse schools and styles,
aestheticians and critics of many different persuasions are all agreed that music has
Classical Music and Cognitive Science 301