Review of Lawrence M. Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Nicola Dibben · Music Theory Online · 2004
Conceptualizing Music attempts to explain musical understanding in the face of music's experiential ephemerality.This experience of music is illustrated at the beginning and end of the book by Charles Swann's encounter with the andante of Vinteuil's sonata for violin and piano, as described in Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu-an example which serves both to illustrate the ephemeral character of the listening experience, and to identify the book's target audience and focal repertoire.As Zbikowski himself notes, despite the appearance of the terms "cognitive", "theory" and "analysis" in the book's title, Conceptualizing Music is not about how the "findings" of music cognition can be applied to music theory and analysis; instead, it explains the role "basic cognitive processes" have in our understanding of music-namely categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the construction and maintenance of conceptual models and theories.Behind this lies an assumption that these processes are general abilities involved in making sense of the world around us, rather than specialized capacities particular to music.[2] Having problematized music theory at the start of the book as arcane and obscure (although at the same time managing not to align himself with that view), Zbikowski is able to claim that understanding how "cognitive structure" shapes our understanding of music will enhance understanding of the role of music theory.Thus, the title "conceptualizing music" refers both to what Zbikowski views as the basic process underlying musical understanding, and to the role of conceptualizing music, as manifested in music theory more generally.[3] The book's interest in cognition, theory and analysis is commensurate with the confluence of cognitive and musictheoretic domains in the work of Robert Gjerdingen, Leonard B. Meyer, and Eugene Narmour, and also with the work of Nicholas Cook, in relation to the role of cultural knowledge in musical understanding.Like these other writers, Zbikowski's work contributes to understanding the processes underlying musical understanding, and theory-making.Surprisingly, no mention is made of one of the book's major contributions: its development of notions of associative structure in the context of the domination of music cognition and theory by hierarchical representations of musical structure and understanding.In this respect, the book makes an exciting contribution to music cognition and theory.[4] The book is structured in two parts.The first part presents the theoretical underpinnings of the approach, with a chapter devoted to each of the three "basic processes."The second part presents a series of case studies which use this framework to shed light on musical syntax (discourse arising from motives theorized as categories), musical ontology (music's existence as Volume 10, Number 4, December 2004