Review of Elizabeth Margulis,On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind(Oxford, 2013)

Abstract

[1] Music is extraordinarily repetitive. Repetition in music seems to be close to a cultural universal, characterizing the music of most peoples and times. Even Bruno Nettl (1983) includes repetition as one of his few musical universals: "All cultures make some use of internal repetition and variation in their musical utterances" (46). Huron and Ollen (2004) also found a remarkable degree of repetition in music. Looking at a broad cross-cultural sample from five continents over five centuries, they estimated that about 94% of musical passages are literally repeated at some later point in the music.[2] For being such a ubiquitous feature of music, it is striking that there has been relatively little work done on repetition. Of course, scholars have examined repetition within certain limited spheres of music-making, in art music (e.g. Duker 2008), minimalist music (e.g. Fink 2005), popular music (e.g. Middleton 1983, Monson 1999, and Garcia 2005), or in performance practice with repeated performances of the same work (e.g. Gabrielsson 1987). Nevertheless, given the close ties between repetition and all manners of performance, composition, and listening, there is a remarkable dearth of research that looks at a broad range of phenomena associated with musical repetition. In other words, behind all of these specific uses of repetition in music lie fascinating, fundamental, and unanswered questions: Why is there so much repetition in music? What is it about music that affords such repetition? What is it about humans that prompts engagement with music in such repetitive ways?[3] It is into this scholarly lacuna that Elizabeth Margulis has moved with an important endeavor, On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. In this work, she provides her readers with an interesting and valuable first real attempt to tie together disparate strands of research into an overarching investigation of musical repetition. She looks at the big picture of musical repetition by explicitly engaging with some of the foundational questions. Instead of reducing her study to just a few aspects of repetition in music, Margulis examines a wide array of phenomena. What is significant about Margulis's book is its holistic and multidisciplinary approach; one of its greatest strengths is its juxtaposition of important work done in the diverse fields of cognitive psychology, music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, and linguistic theory. By placing these strands of research into dialogue with one another, Margulis tells a compelling story about how we process the world and construct our musical discourses.Scope and Approach[4] A common approach to addressing a broad, general question in a monograph is to start with the formulation of a theory and then support it through the analysis of musical excerpts illustrative of that theory. Margulis instead takes the opposite approach. Rather than beginning with an a priori theory of musical repetition, she begins with observation and allows theory to flow out of her discussions. In many ways, this type of strategy is much more compelling than the alternative, as it allows her to nuance her discussions as she makes room for the multiple subtle differences in the various phenomena of musical repetition. Throughout the book, Margulis follows the same pattern: she uses these basic musical observations as windows into examining provocative questions about why music should be such a way, leading invariably to a discussion of relevant empirical psychological research and subsequent insights into the psychology of musical repetition.[5] The result is something of a topical study rather than one single narrative trajectory. Although there is a general sense of progression through the book, each chapter basically serves as a fresh investigation into musical repetition from a different perspective. For example, there is a chapter on repetition in musical performance-discussing differences and similarities between both part repetition within the same work and repetition of whole works during different performances. …