Gerhard Bruno Erich Lock defens his doctoral thesis on 12 June at 13.00 room A-402 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Musicology):

“Methodological Contributions to a Cognitive Analysis of Perceived Structural Musical Tension in Contemporary Post-Tonal Orchestral Music”

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kerri Kotta

Consultant: Prof. Dr.  Mauri Kaipainen (University of Helsinki)

Opponent: Prof. Dr. Anna Rita Addessi (University of Bologna)

The doctoral thesis is available HERE and in print in the EAMT library.

Abstract:

The basic goal of this dissertation is to intertwine music analysis and music psychology using a cognitive approach. The general aim is to advance analytical methods in order to enhance the understanding of the general object – complex musical structures and contemporary post-tonal orchestral music (CPTOM) – while observing/analyzing the special object of this dissertation – musical tension as a compound phenomenon – that is universally comprehensible but complicated to research systematically. In this dissertation music is understood as environment (publications III, IV). Furthermore, principles of modeling and analogies (publication III) as well as visualization and representation of music (publication II) are presented. The main objective is to detect, describe, make sense of and comprehend structural aspects that purportedly trigger the experience of musical tension as a temporal dynamic wave-like (real-world) phenomenon (TDWP) during attentive listening to CPTOM. The means to achieve this objective are defining and empirically analyzing musical tension in complex, cross-style and sound-centered post-tonal orchestral and symphonic music by the Estonian contemporary composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (b 1959): 4th Symphony/Percussion Concerto Magma (2002) and Oxymoron (2003) for large ensemble. The Introductory chapter presents in section 1 the basic goal and general object, the general aim and special object, the reasons to arrive at a cognitive approach and basic methodological aspects. Section 2 discusses music-theoretical and music- psychological thinking intertwined, introduces important methodological-philosophical matters (e.g. Kantian analytic idealism), temporal dynamic cognitive processes and microgenesis, psychophysical measurement principles, cognitive dynamic listening models, and protonarratives as a “pre-definition” of musical tension. In section 3 key concepts are introduced: music and tension, salience and attention, salience in complex sounds and contemporary music, musical parameters and narrativity. Musical tension has been defined 3music-theoretically as (perceived) structural musical tension (publications I, Ia, IV), later it is identified as Cognitive Musical Tension (CMT) (publication V) and a tension, cognition and narrativity joining cross-domain definition of ‘Perceived structural musical tension’ (PSMT) is presented (publication V, see 3.5). For this dissertation empirical experiments have been conducted with slider-controllers (publications I, Ia, II [N=7, N=6]; IV [N=26]) and the especially developed COSM: Cognitive Octagonal Slice Model (publication IV [N=14]) enabling to detect musical events as Impulses/“moments of change” and their ‘content’, musical parameters, via salience. The research methodology and design in section 4 uses triangulation and presents answers to the guiding questions provided by the especially developed Twelve Strategic Steps for modeling/analyzing of scientific models (TSSM, publication III) aiming at supporting the development of COSM. Section 5 presents extended summaries of and relations between the included publications. Section 6 arrives at the conclusions and implications of this dissertation. The appendices present the re-prints of the included publications (A.1–6); the technical steps to apply the research design of this dissertation (B); methodological questions that appeared after publications I and Ia (C.1–2); and some overall results of the COSM experiment. Data analysis has been conducted with the DBSCAN: Density-Based Algorithm for Discovering Clusters in Large Spatial Databases with Noise via cluster-finding and time series patterns. Specific results of the main study (publication IV) show that a hypothesized higher salience of “secondary” (SP) over “primary” musical parameters (PP) could be confirmed only partly in Tüür’s 4th Symphony/Percussion Concerto Magma. Overall results (see Appendix D) show that the musical parameters “dynamics” (SP), “rhythm” (PP) and “instrumentation/timbre” (SP) as so-called All salience level parameters (AL) are perceived as more salient than the remaining, so-called Basic salience level parameters (BL). This result is in line with general observations/expectations about musical tension, musical parameters as well as Tüür’s compositional tools and his postulated “integrated cognition” goal. The novelties and achievements of this dissertation are mainly methodological: the experiments (including COSM) can be understood as a “psychophysical measurement” procedure detecting “just noticeable difference” (JND) in Impulses/“moments of change” and musical parameters via salience. COSM represents an external, intersubjectively shared spatial standard-object to gain a meaningful audio-visual-salience based Kantian objective understanding of musical tension in CPTOM.