Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter

by Justin London

Overview

Our sense that a waltz is "in three" or a blues song is "in four with a shuffle" comes from our sense of musical meter. Hearing in Time explores musical meter from the point of view of cognitive theories of perception and attention. London explores how our ability to follow musical meter is simply a specific instance of our more general ability to synchronize our attention to regularly recurring events in our environment. As such, musical meter is subject to a number of fundamental perceptual and cognitive constraints, which form the cornerstones of London's account. Because listening to music, like many other rhythmic activities, is something that we often do, London views it as a skilled activity for performers and non-performers alike. Hearing in Time approaches musical meter in the context of music as it is actually performed, rather than as a theoretical ideal. Its approach is not based on any particular musical style or cultural practice, so it uses familiar examples from a broad range of music--Beethoven and Bach to Brubeck and Ghanaian drumming. Taking this broad approach brings out a number of fundamental similarities between a variety of different metric phenomena, such as the difference between so-called simple versus complex or additive meters. Because of its accessible style--only a modest ability to read a musical score is presumed--Hearing in Time is for anyone interested in rhythm and meter, including cognitive psychologists, musicologists, musicians, and music theorists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198036456
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/02/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Justin London is Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, USA. Trained as a classical guitarist, he holds the Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied with Leonard Meyer. His main research area is the perception and cognition of musical meter, though he is also interested in musical aesthetics, linguistic pragmatics, and the Delta Blues. He served as President of the Society for Music Theory in 2007-2009.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
1.	Meter as a Kind of Attentional Behavior	9
2.	Research on Temporal Perception and its Relevance for Theories of Musical Meter	27
3.	Meter-Rhythm Interactions I: Ground Rules	48
4.	Metric Representations and Metric Well-Formedness	60
5.	Meter-Rhythm Interactions II: Problems	79
6.	Metric Flux in Beethoven's Fifth	89
7.	Non-Isochronous Meters	100
8.	NI-Meters in Theory and Practice	116
9.	The Many Meters Hypothesis	142
	Conclusion	161
	Notes	169
	Bibliography	177
	Index	190

Editorial Reviews

"London's book clearly provides the single best introduction to, and summary of, a century of psychological and theoretical study into the nature of musical meter and rhythm. For both music scholars and performers, this text offers an unbiased, reliable, and wide-ranging discussion of these important concepts." —Robert Gjerdingen, Music Theory Program, Northwestern University School of Music

"Justin London is one of those rare music theorists who is sympathetic to and thoroughly familiar with psychological research. His theory of musical meter is informed by that research, and thus it represents both a psychologically realistic music theory and a valuable theoretical underpinning for psychological research. London presents his ideas in an engaging and easily understandable manner, so this book should make pleasurable reading for anyone interested in the temporal structure of music." —Bruno H. Repp, Senior Scientist, Haskins Laboratories

"Hearing in Time by Justin London was and is an important book by a unique scholar. Since its publication, significant work has indeed been done on the topic of rhythm and meter. This updated 2nd edition of Hearing in Time cites a number of recent research studies that connect to the ideas in the book making it a valuable resource." —Joel Snyder, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

From the Publisher