Customer Reviews

Music as Cognition : The Development of Thought in Sound

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I am the author. I write this note as a way of giving potential readers additional information here at Amazon. I hope no one will be offended at hearing from the author herself, and of course the "stars" are meaningless (I had to choose something), and this is not a "review." The internet is a wonderful thing, offering this type of opportunity. As I write, the book approaches the 15th anniversary of its publication by Columbia University Press. The original work for the book was generously supported by the Spencer Foundation of Chicago and conducted in the psychology department at Yale.

The book is in two parts. The first part puts forth a theory of music cognition (music as nonlinguistic thought) and compares that theory to competing views. I am a great believer in theory, and in spelling out where you stand at the outset, to the extent a scientist can do this. Music psychology especially has been a field that is "all over the map" as far as the theoretical approaches taken. Also in the first part, I set forth twelve cognitive "processes"---ways of thinking, you might say---that are components of music cognition. Unsurprisingly, these are drawn from music theory and include such things as grasping a harmonic structure, a variation, and so on.

The second part of the book takes the position that the best way to investigate these processes is to observe how they develop in the young. Thus, I report the results of experiments I did on children, across a spectrum of ages, and on adults. Each experiment entailed a one-on-one interview. I was heavily influenced by Piaget's approach in the design of these experiments. Some reviewers, I am aware, think the experiments are the best and most creative part of the book. Others think they are the weakest and that the theoretical first part is really more valuable. I take no position on it, but concede that the experimentation reported is exploratory, and more would need to be done. I hope this information has been helpful.

The term music psychology has been over used since Seashore. The current hodgepodge of topics included in music psychology is astonishing as well as disappointing. Sarafine was the first to separate out Cognition as a "subset" of music psychology fllowed later by Slaboda's "Generative Process" and others. Any one interested in music psychology can get a focused if somewhat limited view from this text. Most is Sarafine's own work.