Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind by Fred Lerdahl
James Michael Floyd · Notes · 2022
Reviewed by: Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind by Fred Lerdahl James Michael Floyd Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind. By Fred Lerdahl. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. [xiii, 144 p. ISBN 9780520305090 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9780520305106 (paperback), $34.95; ISBN 9780520973251 (e-book), price varies.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Fred Lerdahl, the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, is a well-known composer and writer on music who has previously published two books (A Generative Theory of Tonal Music [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983], with coauthor Ray Jackendoff, and Tonal Pitch Space [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001]) as well as many articles. In the preface to his most recent volume, Lerdahl clearly states his intent: "I have felt all along the need to explain how, for me, composing and theorizing are complementary and indeed mutually necessary activities" (pp. ix–x). The book is organized into five chapters, based on the lectures Lerdahl gave as part of the Ernest Bloch Lectures in fall 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley. In chapter 1, "From Composition to Theory," Lerdahl discusses musical influences, whether positive or negative, on his own music composition. Composers discussed include Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Arnold Schoenberg, and Milton Babbitt. Babbitt's abstract systems of composition are not discussed in detail. Although Lerdahl admired Babbitt's "powerful example of thinking music through, boldly and systematically, from the bottom up" (p. 3), he was dissatisfied with Babbitt's opaque compositional technique. Lerdahl's quest as a composer led him to choose five characteristics for his music: (1) tonal center with "degrees of distance from it, so that the music could depart and return, tense and relax; further, it must be possible to establish subsidiary centers" (p. 6), (2) harmonies "from the clear root of a major triad to an ambiguous or effectively nonexistent root" (p. 7), (3) harmonies to "range from a simple triad to a 12-note sonority" (p. 7), (4) rhythm and timbre "with structural rather than merely impressionistic value" (p. 7), and (5) "to embellish the melody freely" (p. 9). A positive influence on Lerdahl was the reading of Noam Chomsky's Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968). Lerdahl was interested in adapting Chomsky's ideas on language and applying them to music. While attending Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lectures at Harvard, Lerdahl met Ray Jackendoff, a linguist, who became his collaborator. The latter portion of chapter 1 is devoted to Lerdahl's and Jackendoff's theories and Lerdahl's application of those theories to his musical compositions, and chapter 2, "Genesis and Architecture of the Music Theory," adapts his theories for an analysis of the sixth of Franz Schubert's Moments musicaux. Several music and graphic examples are provided. In chapter 3, "On the Musical Capacity," Lerdahl "addresses the nature and limitations of the musical mind, based on a variety of ideas and evidence" (p. 53). Topics discussed include (1) the number of polyphonic music lines that one can hear distinctly versus the number of lines that will blend into a unity, (2) perceived rhythmic and metrical structures in which tempo plays an important role, (3) various scale constructions of symmetrical and asymmetrical divisions of the octave, (4) the concepts of consonance and dissonance and the psychoacoustic tonic, and (5) whether music is evolutionary or adaptive. In chapter 4, "Cognitive Constraints Redux," Lerdahl presents an intriguing [End Page 558] discussion of complexity and complicatedness in music. Lerdahl defines the terms: "Musical complicatedness is a function of the number and variety of objects per unit of time. Musical complexity is a function of hierarchal depth" (p. 83). He organizes this concept into four quadrants—complicated and not complex, complicated and complex, not complex and not complicated, and complex and not complicated—and then discusses several musical works, including Franz Schubert's Moments musicaux No. 6, which falls into fourth quadrant; Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, which falls into the first quadrant; typical minimalist works, which fall into the third quadrant; and Johann Sebastian Bach's and Schoenberg's works...