Anticipation: Some Notes

Abstract

In musical discourse, the word “anticipation” can suggest two separate, yet not unrelated, analytical approaches. The first is ancient, and concerns a device of melody and its harmonic implications. The second is nascent, though already well-documented, and concerns the way the human brain, trained by a lifetime of listening, hears and interprets musical information. This chapter enlists both approaches to investigate the various ways composers, intuitively or intentionally, prepare the ear for fulfillment and deception alike. It begins with a rudimentary example of an anticipation tone, and then expands the classical notion of this phenomenon by tracing its variants in works spanning two centuries of Western music history. It concludes with a postscript that offers a vision of music’s future, in which anticipation acquires new meaning and creates new challenges.