A Reply to Peel and Slawson's Review of "A Generative Theory of Tonal Music"

Abstract

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Picture perfect peaks: comprehension of inferential techniques in visual narratives

“…This may explain why the panels after echoic onlookers and metonymic selective framing (both with [framing] features) were slower than those after onomatopoeia, despite all being explicit. Both our standardized beta-weights and our additional analyses of dominance and importance (see online repository) suggest that features may exert various levels of strength in relationship to one another, like ‘preference rules’ in dynamic systems described in approaches to the cognition of music or in theories of Gestalt psychology (Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 2006; Lerdahl et al, 1985). As this is the first study to investigate these inferencing techniques in this way, future studies can better assess the relative influences and constraints on these features.…”

“…Cohn (2019) posited that various features can describe the informativeness of each technique, as in Table 1. These features could be just descriptive theoretical constructs, or they may function psychologically in a ‘preference rule’ system described in approaches to the cognition of music or in theories of Gestalt psychology (Jackendoff & Lerdahl, 2006; Lerdahl et al, 1985). Preference rules are a characterization of principles involved in a dynamic system where features may exert various levels of strength in a context, thereby competing with each other to lead to an interpretation of a stimuli.…”

The Problem of Prolongation in "Tonal" Music: Terminology, Perception, and Expressive Meaning

“…And the difficulty we may have in analytically choosing which note is prolonged in such a gesture may be heightened when the first note is placed on a downbeat and the second note belongs to a clear stepwise melodic strand. This is the source of the well-known debates between those who claim the Kopfton in Mozart's A major Piano Sonata (K. 331) first-movement theme is C# and those who claim it is E (Schenker 1925, Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983, Peel and Slawson 1984; the C# is on a downbeat, the E is higher, and both belong to clear stepwise melodic strands.…”

“…The term seems to imply that an event hierarchy must consist-at every level-of events that actually occur on the surface of the music being analyzed. Perhaps one reason why this misconception seems widespread is the influence of the work of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983). Lerdahl now (1988) describes his "prolongational reductions" as "event hierarchies."…”