Abstract
Within the field of systems theory, the term robustness has typically been applied to different contexts such as automatic control, genetic networks, metabolic pathways, morphogenesis, and ecosystems. All these systems involve either man-made machines, or living organisms. In this chapter, we will consider music as a peculiar complex system, involving both the realm of machines (the musical instrument) and the realm of biology (the player and the listeners). We will discuss some of the properties of music experience in terms of different attributes of robustness, focusing in particular on stability, the property enabling a complex system to maintain its function against a wide range of external and internal changes. We will provide examples of the human ability of isolating and maintaining stable information within the perceptual flow and despite changes in the external world that reach our perceptions, leading towards a characterization of robustness in music perception as referred both to the search for regularities and to the range of tolerance that perception admits to regularities. Finally, we will list four multiple interaction cycles that typically characterize music experience and that involve both internal properties of the organism and the environment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arons, B. (1992). A review of the cocktail party effect. Journal of the American Voice I/O Society, 12(7), 35–50.
Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brotons, M., & Koger, S. M. (2000). The impact of music therapy on language functioning in dementia. Journal of Music Therapy, 37, 183–195.
Cohen, A. J., Thorpe, L. A., & Trehub, S. E. (1987). Infants’ perception of musical relations in short transposed tone sequences. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 41, 33–47.
Cooke, D. (1959). The language of music. London: Oxford University Press.
De Weerd, P. (2006). Perceptual filling-in: More than the eye can see. Progress in Brain Research, 154, 227–245.
Descartes, R. (1961). Compendium Musicae. Rome: American Institute of Musicology.
Di Stefano, N., & Bertolaso, M. (2014). Understanding musical consonance and dissonance: Epistemological considerations from a systemic perspective. System, 2, 566–575.
Di Stefano, N., Focaroli, V., Giuliani, A., Formica, D., Taffoni, F., & Keller, F. (2017). A new research method to test auditory preferences in young listeners: Results from a consonance versus dissonance perception study. Psychology of Music, 45(5), 699–712.
Drake, C., & Bertrand, D. (2003). The quest for universals in temporal processing in music. In R. Zatorre (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fernandez-Leon. (2014). Robustness as a relational phenomenon. Biological Reviews, 89, 552–567.
Gabrielsson. (2002). Emotion perceived and emotion felt: Same or different? Musicae Scientiae, 5(1), 123–147.
Geretsegger, M., Elefant, C., Mössler, K. A., & Gold, C. (2014). Music therapy for people with autism spectrum disorder. The Cochrane Library, 6, CD004381.
Handel, S. (1989). Listening: An introduction to the perception of auditory events. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Juslin, P. N. (2013). From every day emotions to aesthetic emotions: Towards a unified theory of musical emotions. Physics of Life Reviews, 10(3), 235–266.
Kavakami, et al. (2013). Sad music induces pleasant emotions. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 311.
Kitano, H. (2004). Biological robustness. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(11), 826–837.
Komeilipoor, N., Rodger, M. W. M., Craig, C. M., & Cesari, P. (2015). (Dis-) Harmony in movement: Effects of musical dissonance on movement timing and form. Experimental Brain Research, 233, 1585–1595.
Kuyper, P. (1972). The cocktail party effect. Audiology, 11(5), 277–282.
Lagasse, A. B., & Thaut, M. H. (2013). The neurobiological foundation of neurologic music therapy. Music and Medicine, 5, 228–233.
Leman, M. (2007). Embodied music cognition and mediation technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leman, M., Nijs, L., & Di Stefano, N. (2017). On the role of the hand in the expression of music. In M. Bertolaso & N. Di Stefano (Eds.), The hand perception, cognition, and action (pp. 175–192). Cham: Springer.
Oldfield, A. (2006). Interactive music therapy – A positive approach. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Pankovski, T., & Pankovska, E. (2017). Emergence of the consonance pattern within synaptic weights of a neural network featuring Hebbian neuroplasticity. Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures, 22, 82–94.
Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1994). Frequency ratios and the discrimination of pure tone sequences. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 472–478.
Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1996a). Children’s discrimination of melodic intervals. Developmental Psychology, 32, 1039–1050.
Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1996b). Natural musical intervals: Evidence from infant listeners. Psychological Science, 7, 272–277.
Schouten, J. F. (1938). The perception of subjective tones (Vol. 41, pp. 1086–1093). Amsterdam: K Akademie van Wetenshappen.
Stainsby, T., & Cross, I. (2016). The perception of pitch. In Hallam, Cross, & Taut (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of music psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Trainor, L. J., & Trehub, S. E. (1993a). Musical context effects in infants and adults: Key distance. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 19, 615–626.
Trainor, L. J., & Trehub, S. E. (1993b). What mediates infants’ and adults’ superior processing of the major over the augmented triad? Music Perception, 11, 185–196.
Trehub, S. E., & Thorpe, L. A. (1989). Infants’ perception of rhythm. Categorization of auditory sequences by temporal structure. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 43, 217–229.
Trulla, L. L., Di Stefano, N., & Giuliani, A. (2018). Computational approach to musical consonance and dissonance. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 381.
von Ehrenfels, C. (1988). On Gestalt qualities. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory (pp. 82–117). Wien: Philosophia Verlag.
Warren, R. M. (2008). Auditory perception. An analysis and synthesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Windsor, L. (2009). Measurement and models of performance. In Hallam, Cross, & Thaut (Eds.), Oxford handbook of music psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keller, F., Di Stefano, N. (2018). The Robustness of Musical Language: A Perspective from Complex Systems Theory. In: Bertolaso, M., Caianiello, S., Serrelli, E. (eds) Biological Robustness. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01198-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01198-7_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01197-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01198-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)