On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. By Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

Abstract

In his essay ‘The Fine Art of Repetition’, which one might wish had been more influential among musicologists and music theorists, the music philosopher Peter Kivy claimed that repetition is a ‘defining feature’ of ‘music alone’, otherwise known as absolute music, ‘from Bach to Brahms, and before and beyond’ (The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music (Cambridge, 1993), 359). Margulis prefers the view that repetition represents ‘some sort of unified psychological principle, rather than an incidental byproduct of a set of cultural or historical circumstances’ (p. 78). Further, repetition is such a fundamental process that it can represent both actual music and ‘musical imagery’ (‘imagery’ as evidenced, for example, by our ability to recognize a work of music from hearing only a tiny fragment of it; or by our tendency to experience ‘earworms’, melodic loops that recur in the mind). It is foundational for Margulis that the ‘repetitiveness of musical imagery and actual music, rather than one being influenced by the other, are two manifestations of a general property of the cognitive musical capacity’ (p. 84).