Anthropological and Psychological Approaches to the Study of Music Theory and Musical Cognition

Abstract

In the last decade some of the most significant research in ethnomusicology has resulted from anthropologically orientated inquiries into the nature of musical cognition. We have witnessed the development of a ethnomusicology; based on the exploration of emic notions about music. Some studies have been directed specifically to explore these cognitive representations, for example: Zemp (1979) on the panpipe ensembles of the 'Are'are; Feld (1981) on descriptions of melodic contour amongst the Kaluli of New Guinea, and Sakata (1983) on musical ethnosemantics amongst Persian speakers in Afghanistan. Others have tackled these issues as part of wider ranging studies, such as Blacking (1967:20-1) on the naming of pipes in the end-blown reed-pipe ensembles of the Venda, and Berliner (1978:2-7, 54-9) on the system of note names for the keys on the Shona mbira. From such research we have discovered that many societies have well articulated analytical music theories which describe tonal or tuning systems and ascribe names to the various pitches they employ and/or to the intervals between them. Most musicians, in global terms, probably operate cognitively in terms of melodic pattern gestalten, in contours, rather than in discrete elements (Harwood 1976), but in an analytical music theory we deal with single pitches. A society that can articulate such an analytical music theory has already made some kind of an ethno-scientific analysis of the structure of its own music, or borrowed a theory from elsewhere which fits it. Many questions arise when we examine the significance of verbalised analytical music theory. Why do some societies have such music theories and not others? What is their relationship to differing types of music, and are there some kinds of music which cannot be readily learned/performed unless one acquires this formal knowledge? What is the cognitive role of music theory? Is such knowledge a static representational model that describes what the musician already knows but which has little or no direct role in performance? Or is it an operational model that has a dynamic role in the control of ongoing musical performance? The terms operational model and representational model have been borrowed from Caws (1974) but are used here in this particular sense. Such questions take us beyond anthropology and into the domain of psychology. The anthropological approach to musical cognition is limited to what can be verbally articulated (including musical demonstrations framed in verbal terms), while cognitive psychology is, in principle, able to explore those subconscious and quasi-conscious processes which lie beyond the reach of anthropological methodology. While it may be argued that the differences between the orientations, methods, analytical