Music cognition is an interdisciplinary field concerned with
applying the methods of cognitive science — experimental,
computational, and neurological — to musical issues and
problems. The Eastman School of Music and the Brain and Cognitive
Sciences Department at the University of Rochester offer an active
and supportive environment for music cognition study and research.
In August 2005, the University of Rochester recognized music
cognition as an "Interdisciplinary Cluster", providing additional
funding for music cognition events and activities.
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The Eastman/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium
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Studying Music Cognition
at Eastman/UR
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Some Recent Publications and Conference Presentations
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Some Recent Dissertations
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The Eastman/UR/Cornell Music Cognition Symposium meets four times a
year (twice in the fall and twice in the spring) on Saturday
afternoons. The symposium is organized by Elizabeth West Marvin and
David Temperley at Eastman; Elissa Newport, Dick Aslin, and Joyce McDonough at the UR
Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department; and Carol Krumhansl at
Cornell University. Often, the symposium features invited guests;
guests in recent years have included Elaine Chew, Peter Gregersen, David Huron,
Petr Janata, Fred Lerdahl, Dan Levitin, Josh McDermott, Ken'ichi Miyazaki, Rosemary Mountain, Eugene
Narmour, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Caroline Palmer, Ani Patel, Isabelle Peretz, Dirk-Jan Povel, Jean-Claude
Risset, Mark
Schmuckler, John Sloboda, Barbara Tillman, Sandra Trehub, and Robert
Zatorre. Symposia may also feature presentations of ongoing work by
students and faculty at Eastman, UR, and Cornell, and discussions of
readings and topics in music cognition. Recent topics have included
performance expression, probabilistic modeling, melodic expectation, and
music-language connections.
Symposium guests for the 2008-9 academic year is as follows:
Sept. 27 - Developmental Music Psychology (featuring Laurel Trainor)
Oct. 9-11 - Residency: Steve Larson
(Oct. 11 Session: Music and Expectation)
March 28 - Current research by symposium participants
April 18 - Music and the Brain (featuring Robert Zatorre)
To be added to the symposium's e-mail mailing list, contact Elizabeth
West Marvin (bmarvin@esm.rochester.edu).
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Students with interests in music cognition are encouraged to pursue
graduate study at Eastman/UR. This can be done either through the PhD
program in music theory at Eastman, or through the PhD program in
Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester.
The Music Theory PhD at Eastman. Students in Eastman's
theory PhD program have great flexibility in designing their own
programs of study, and those with interests in music cognition are
encouraged to pursue them. Students take graduate-level courses in the
Brain and Cognitive Sciences department, and BCS faculty serve on
dissertation committees. The theory department's course offerings in
music cognition include an undergraduate course entitled "Music and
the Mind" and a graduate seminar on music cognition. The theory
department's Music Research Laboratory has a dedicated room for music
perception/cognition experiments. Visit the theory department's
website here. For
further information, contact Elizabeth West Marvin
(bmarvin@esm.rochester.edu) or David Temperley
(dtemperley@esm.rochester.edu).
The Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the University of
Rochester. The Brain & Cognitive Sciences department welcomes
graduate and undergraduate students with interests in music,
especially those wishing to explore connections between music and
other areas of cognitive science, such as language, perception, and
learning and development. At the graduate level, the department
provides training in behavioral, computational, and neural approaches
to the study of perception, cognition, and language. Students with
interests in music cognition are encouraged to take courses at Eastman
and work with Eastman faculty. BCS also offers an undergraduate
"track" called "Music Cognition and Language". Visit the BCS website
here. For further
information, contact Professor Elissa Newport
(newport@bcs.rochester.edu).
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Some Recent Publications and Conference Presentations
The following list is a sampling of recent publications and
conference presentations in music cognition by people at
the University of Rochester and Eastman.
Elizabeth West Marvin and Elissa Newport. 2008. "Statistical
Learning in Language and Music: Absolute Pitch without Labeling."
International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC10),
Sapporo, Japan.
David Temperley and Elizabeth West Marvin. 2008. "Pitch-class Distribution and the
Identification of Key." Music Perception 25, 193-212
David Temperley (2008). A Probabilistic Model of Melody
Perception. Cognitive Science 32, 418-444.
Elizabeth West Marvin (2007). Absolute Pitch Perception and the
Pedagogy of Relative Pitch. Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy
21, 1-34.
David Temperley (2007). Music and Probability. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Christopher Bartlette, Dave Headlam, Mark Bocko and Gordana
Velickic (2006). Effect of network latency on interactive musical
performance. Music Perception, 24, 49-59.
Diana Deutsch, Trevor Henthorn, Elizabeth Marvin, and HongShuai Xu
(2006). Absolute pitch among American and Chinese Conservatory
Students: Prevalence Differences and Evidence for a Speech-Related
Critical Period. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 719-722.
Sarah Creel, Elissa Newport, & Richard Aslin (2004). Distant melodies:
Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies in tone
sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 30, 1119-1130.
Panayotis Mavromatis (2004). A Hidden Markov Model of melody in Greek Church Chant.
8th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Evanston, IL.
Panayotis Mavromatis & Matthew Brown (2004). Parsing context-free grammars
for music: A computational model of Schenkerian Analysis. 8th
International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Evanston,
IL.
Victoria Saah & Elizabeth West Marvin. (2004). Absolute memory of
learned melodies in childen trained by the Suzuki Violin
Method. 8th International Society for Music Perception and
Cognition , Evanston, IL.
David Temperley (2004). Bayesian models of musical structure and cognition.
Musicae Scientiae 8, 175-205.
Dave Headlam, Christopher Bartlette, & Mark Bocko (2003). Latency,
musicality, and network performance.
Society for Music Perception and Cognition Annual Meeting, Las Vegas.
Yuet-Hon Samuel Ng (2003). Temporal expectancy at the level of musical
phrases: A study of expectancy length. Society
for Music Perception and Cognition Annual Meeting, Las Vegas.
David Temperley & Christopher Bartlette (2002). Parallelism as a
factor in metrical analysis. Music Perception, 20, 117-149.
David Temperley (2001). The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Elizabeth West Marvin & Aleck Brinkman (2000). The effect of key
color and timbre on absolute-pitch recognition in musical contexts.
Music Perception 18/2, 111-137.
Elizabeth West Marvin & Aleck Brinkman (1999). The effect of
modulation and formal manipulation on perception of tonic closure by
expert listeners. Music Perception 16/4 (1999): 389-408.
Panayotis Mavromatis & Virginia Williamson (1999). Towards a
perceptual model for categorizing atonal sonorities. Annual meeting of
the Society for Music Theory, Atlanta.
Jenny Saffran, Elizabeth Johnson, Richard Aslin, & Elissa Newport
(1999). Statistical learning of tonal sequences by human infants and
adults. Cognition, 70, 27-52.
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Kelly Francis. In progress. "Attention and Multi-Part Music."
(Advisor: David Temperley)
Christopher Bartlette. 2007. "A Study of Harmonic Distance and Its Role
in Musical Performance." (Advisor: David Temperley)
Panayotis Mavromatis. 2005. "The Echoi of Modern Greek Church Chant
in Written annd Oral Transmission: A Computational Model and its
Cognitive Implications." (Advisor: Matthew Brown)
Gavin P. Chuck. 2004. "Toward a Cognitive Theory of Musical Meaning."
(Advisor: Robert Wason)
Scott Spiegelberg. 2002. "The Psychoacoustics of Musical Articulation."
2002. (Advisors: Dave Headlam and Elizabeth Marvin)
Nancy Rogers. 2000. "The Role of Verbal Encoding in Musical Memory."
(Advisor: Elizabeth Marvin)
