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Book Review
Dec. 3rd, 2010 09:17 pmSweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation
by David Huron
Huron is a musicologist at Ohio State, and also heads the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory at that school. This book draws heavily on the work he has done there. In it, Huron explores how music works from a cognitive perspective, focusing on how the mechanisms of expectation affect how we experience music. Despite being rather technical, Sweet Anticipation is a fascinating read. It encompasses both psychology and music theory, explaining the biological and cognitive workings of expectation and then showing how music engages them. It's a quite different view than the one composers and other musicians are given during their educations, but it makes a lot of sense and often adds to what we learn in theory classes. However, Sweet Anticipation is not an instruction manual - it does not try to add to the toolbox, as it were. It is more concerned with shedding light on existing music than with affecting music yet to be written. Nonetheless, as a composer and performer, I found Huron's approach very interesting and enlightening.
by David Huron
Huron is a musicologist at Ohio State, and also heads the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory at that school. This book draws heavily on the work he has done there. In it, Huron explores how music works from a cognitive perspective, focusing on how the mechanisms of expectation affect how we experience music. Despite being rather technical, Sweet Anticipation is a fascinating read. It encompasses both psychology and music theory, explaining the biological and cognitive workings of expectation and then showing how music engages them. It's a quite different view than the one composers and other musicians are given during their educations, but it makes a lot of sense and often adds to what we learn in theory classes. However, Sweet Anticipation is not an instruction manual - it does not try to add to the toolbox, as it were. It is more concerned with shedding light on existing music than with affecting music yet to be written. Nonetheless, as a composer and performer, I found Huron's approach very interesting and enlightening.
