Perception and Cognition of Music

Perception and Cognition of Music: The Sorbonne Lectures presents revised and updated materials delivered in four distinguished lectures at the Université Paris-Sorbonne and the Université de Montréal, originally published in French.

The book bridges the fields of music psychology, music theory, and music analysis by way of a consideration of several aspects of music listening through the lens of cognitive psychology. Auditory grouping processes play a role in organizing the continuous incoming sensory information into events, streams of events, and segments of streams that form musical units. Perceived properties of events and streams depend on how the incoming information is organized.

Special attention is given to timbre as an understudied musical parameter, which can be a strong structuring force and form-bearing element in music through orchestration practice. The development of systems of abstract knowledge built on different musical parameters within a given culture focuses on the cognitive processing of pitch systems and structures and their role in the mental representation of hierarchical event structures in listeners’ minds. Finally, given that music is a temporal art par excellence, the temporality of music listening is explored through a collaborative project involving a composer, psychologists, and musicologists around the conception and creation of a musical work and the perception and affective response it engenders in a live-concert experiment. Each chapter concludes with elements for reflection to expand the necessary transdisciplinary approach that music scholarship needs.

Stephen McAdams, Full Professor, Canada Research Chair in Music Perception and Cognition, McGill University

Stephen McAdams studied music theory and composition before turning to perceptual psychology (BSc, McGill, 1977; PhD, Stanford, 1984). In 1986, he founded the Music Perception and Cognition team at IRCAM in Paris where he headed The Angel of Death research-creation project. He was a senior research scientist in the French CNRS (1989-2004) before moving to McGill University to direct CIRMMT (2004-2009). He holds the Canada Research Chair in Music Perception and Cognition and is Director of the international Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) partnership. He studies musical timbre and its role in the perception of orchestration.