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To cite this Article Dufourt, Hugues(1989)'Music and cognitive psychology: Form-bearing elements',Contemporary Music
Review,4:1,231 — 236
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/07494468900640311
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494468900640311
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ContemporaryMusicReview, (~) 1989Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH
1989, Vol. 4, pp. 231-236 Printed in the United Kingdom
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Contemporary music offers cognitive psychology models that establish relevant and computable
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features for a theoretical field which had remained unspecified up to now. Cognitive psychology
outlines a theory of the relations between memory and perception for which music functions as a test
of effectiveness and coherence. The relationship of cognitive psychology to contemporary music is
that of a theory to its models. Music composition offers new ways of thinking which extend the range
of hypothetical constructions and offer proof of the fecundity of analogy. Cognitive psychology
produces original theories which lend new insight into perceptual mechanisms and challenge the very
foundations on which music is based.
KEYWORDS: Categorization, imprints, pitch, memory, timbre, source, texture.
231
232 HuguesDufourt
overall grasp of its environment is assured and reliable. It is precisely these condi-
tions of objectivity and consistency of sensory information that this session
sought to bring to the fore through what are called "form-bearing elements". To
fully understand the sense and extent of our adaptation to the physical environ-
ment, computer technology had to be able to dislocate natural data, to contradict
the normal functioning of perception, to provoke disequilibrium, to perturb reg-
ulating and integrating mechanisms by offering perception paradoxical or discor-
dant information. The computer can provide experimental conditions which take
us beyond the normal, attaining through technological artifice what remains
unavailable to our senses, thus provoking that which, precisely, never occurs in
nature.
According to McAdams (this volume), perception is engaged in an objectivizing
process which establishes the spatial and temporal coherence of perceived sound
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which disconcerts ear and mind, denying the listener any possibility of a cate-
gorical approach? Wessel and Bristow feel that acoustic properties which have
perceptual value can be controlled with the aid of a computer, bypassing musical
instruments and with no reference to relationships stemming from physical
systems. It is simply a question of operations involving the distribution of spectral
energy and on its variation across time. A multidimensional representation cor-
relates physical parameters with perceptual attributes. Within this model,
frequency modulation synthesis techniques create a timbral continuum allowing
for the transposition of sequences. One might ask, as do psychoacousticians,
what factors are involved in establishing timbral identity, enabling it to resist both
distortions and variations in reverberation.
Jean-Baptiste Barri6re (this volume) denies the notion of timbre its traditional
status as those stable sound qualities which remain recognizable across changes
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