Action and Perception in Rhythm and Music edited by Alf Gabrielsson

Alf Gabrielsson, Action and Perception in Rhythm and Music; Papers given at a symposium in the Third International Conference on Event Perception and Action. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Music, 1987, No. 55; ISBN 91-85428-51-5 (with recorded disk).

In many ways this volume is a second testimonial collection to one of the modern proponents of rhythmic research, Ingmar Bengtsson. [Footnote 1] This volume marks the retirement of Bengtsson as head of the Department of Musicology at Uppsala University -- a post which he has held for a quarter of a century. As with any collection of this sort, the thirteen papers contained within its soft covers are highly varied in quality, and reflect some of the growing pains as music scholarship attempts to accommodate empirically-inspired research within its ranks. The study of rhythm is a particularly apt concern; there is a need to redress the relative imbalance of studies of temporal structure compared with studies of pitch structure. Moreover, as Alf Gabrielsson points out, timing is the one common factor which is available in all music-making endeavors -- independent of the types of resources provided.

After the Preface by Alf Gabrielsson and a historical review by Paul Fraisse, Eric Clarke continues the volume with a valuable paper demonstrating the categorical nature of rhythmic perception. This is a welcome extension to studies by Fraisse (1956) and Povel (1981) which have shown the primacy of small integer proportions in the perception and cognitive representation of rhythms. Clarke follows classic criteria laid out by Studdert-Kennedy, Liberman, Harris and Cooper (1970) for demonstrating that a class of perceptions is categorical in nature. Although the temporal dimension may be physically continuous, there are no `shades of grey' when it comes to the perception of simple and compound meters. Metrical contexts dispose listeners to classify rhythms in a manner which most reconciles the rhythm to the prevailing metrical context (simple or compound). Not surprisingly, there is a sort of mental inertia which tends to conserve the perception of meter -- even in the face of ambiguous or conflicting stimuli.

Clarke places his experimental results in a theoretical context which distinguishes two types of rhythmic information: (1) the metric category of a passage which he equates with the domain of structure, and (2) deviations from strict metricality which he identifies as the "expressive" domain.

"The separation of temporal information into a domain of structure and a domain of expression resolves the apparent paradox that small whole number duration ratios are the simplest to perceive and reproduce, but that real human performances do not conform to these integer proportions." (p.31).

In various forms, the "structure/expression" model articulated in Clarke's paper has become the most common view of musical rhythm. It has an intuitive appeal, partly because it corresponds well with traditional views in western music. But there are certain problems with this model which ought to be explicitly acknowledged. In the first instance, I think it is prudent to be cautious about any iron-clad distinction between the basic (written) musical gestures and expressive or `interpretive' transformation of these gestures. This distinction may be culture-bound, and may arise simply from the division of labors between composer and performer in western art music. Not all performing arts make such a distinction. For example, improvising dancers do not normally conceive of their work in terms of basic gestures which are then embellished or transformed by interpretive nuances. Most dancers view the gesture and the interpretation as inspearalbe and equivalent. Clarke's formal distinction between "a domain of structure and a domain of expression" implies that the metrical context has no expressive qualities. Accordingly, a march (simple-duple) and a gigue (compound-duple) could not be considered to differ with respect to musical expression. But surely this begs the question as to what constitutes musical expression. Few people would object to the characterization of a waltz meter by an expressive term such as "graceful" and the characterization of a rumba by an expressive term such as "sleazy". Another difficulty is that tempo must be discounted as merely a structural rather than expressive component; this suggests that slowing down a disco beat would not change its expressive content. Moreover, wouldn't it be better to characterize "metrically dead-pan" or mechanical performances as "staid" or "awkward" rather than as "neutral" or "devoid of expression"? I am sure that Clarke would agree that metrical context is not merely a neutral wardrobe within which the expressive content hangs, but that the metrical context directly contributes to what we might agree to call the expressive content of a work. Can we unequivocally say that a composer chooses a particular metrical genre purely for "structural" reasons rather than "expressive" reasons?

There are other good reasons to be skeptical of any easy distinction between form and content. Logically, there is little reason why the roles cannot be reversed. For example, rather than viewing the gestures produced by performers as "interpretations", it is equally possible to view them as stereotypic forms by which the expressive content (the "notes" or structure of the work) is conveyed. Do notes convey gestures or do gestures convey notes? What is to be gained by either of these dichotomies?

This issue of expression-as-deviation arises in a number of other papers in this volume. Bengtsson admits that "deviation" is a slippery concept when one is unsure of what constitutes the norm. We use a mechanical norm as the temporal ruler only because we can think of no other alternatives. The problem gains poignancy in Peter Reinholdsson's paper on jazz rhythm. Reinholdsson asks: what justifies comparing performance timings to an abstract (notationally-derived) notion of strict metricality when the music is not notated? What is the legitimate template against which performance "deviations" are compared? Unfortunately, Reinholdsson's paper remains somewhat vague and descriptive, and I feel Reinholdsson makes the problem of a temporal ruler sound more intractable than it is. there are numerous studies concerning the perception of the passage of time which might provide alternative points of departure. And while improvised jazz may not be notated, there is no reason not to use that quintessentially jazz listening response -- toe-tapping -- as a clock against which systematic variations may be examined.

Such heady issues are abandoned for more practical concerns in a paper by Piet Vos and Stephen Handel concerning the production and perception of triplets and duplets. Vos and Handel had subjects perform various triplet/duplet rhythms and then tested the same subjects on the perception of synthesized and re-synthesized renditions. In the perceptual task, subjects were instructed to judge the more "natural" sounding stimuli. Unfortunately, the conclusions of this paper are highly equivocal; the experiments produced enigmatic results such as the fact that the subjects did not necessarily judge even their own performed versions as sounding more natural than various transformations.

Judging stimuli according to "naturalness" is an unfortunate instruction. The obvious tendency is to assume that "natural-sounding" stimuli would also be "preferred" in some sense. But one cannot claim that any systematic result would be correlated with musical preference without further research linking the two concepts. What Vos and Handel have shown is that non-metrically exact triplets and duplets are perceived as sounding more "natural" than metrically exact renditions. But this is hardly surprising, for if by "natural", we mean non-mechanical or irregular, it would make sense that subjects would not choose regular patterns as the most natural sounding. Again, we must remind ourselves that the subjects were not supposed to judge on the basis of preference. But in the end, even the authors slip into this misconception:

"... the changes found in production do not necessarily yield better sounding rhythms" (p. 46)

"... we can suggest that playing doublets and triplets accurately is not preferred." (p.46)

We might expect that professional musicians would be more able to play the alternating rhythms. It is doubtful, however, that the results would be qualitatively different." (p.42)

On the question of musical measurement, Gerald Balzano contributes both a thoughtful and passionate paper. He attacks "the assumption that traditional physics, with its particular arsenal of measuring instruments, provides an exhaustive description or even privileged units of analysis for the real world." (p.179) Balzano ardently pleads for a "return [of] the reckoning of musical units and structures back to musicians, where it rightfully belongs" (p.198) Balzano places particular stress on measurements of pitch:

"The protest of some musicians that "in tune is what the player says is in tune", has been derided by scientists as the woolly-headed thinking of artists." (p.179)

The problem Balzano identifies is exemplified in the frequent tendency to regard metrical structure as a recursively-organized hierarchy. In Mari Riess Jones article, this hierarchy is given a central place. In order for recursive hierarchies to make sense in perceptual theory, all levels of the hierarchy must be qualitatively equivalent from the perceptual point of view -- that is, all hierarchical levels must elicit the same class of phenomenal experience. Music perception may be hierarchically ordered, but in order for the hierarchy to be recursive, all levels must maintain identical properties.

The pitfalls of this mode of thinking are vividly illustrated in the writings of Karlheinz Stockhausen. By manipulating a square-wave oscillator, Stockhausen discovered that as the frequency descended into the subsonic range, pitched tones were transformed into rhythms. Stockhausen extended this simple observation into a full-blown music theory of truly cosmic proportions. He has argued that the epicyclic periodicities of music extend through the complete spectrum of time-frames from the "big bang" to ulta-violet light, and X-rays.

As a formalism, this cosmic perspective is not without interest. However, as a description of perceptual reality it is fatuous. As Balzano would point out, we must keep our understanding of physical origins from coloring our understanding of perceptions. All perceptions share the same origin in the electro-chemical stimulation of the nerves: there is nothing qualitatively different in the activation of the auditory nerve versus the optic nerve. But the perceptual and phenomenal qualities elicited by these two stimulations could be hardly more different. Loudness, saltiness, brightness, pain, and color are qualitatively different experiences despite their common neurological origin. Even within the domain of audition, there arise innumerable distinct mental phenomena -- such as loudness and pitch. As an oscillator is swept into the subsonic region, despite the constancy of the physical phenomenon, the associated mental experience is that of a pitch which is abruptly superseded by a rhythm. Any theory which unifies pitch and rhythm under a single description may be an adequate formal or physical theory, but is not a good perceptual theory for it blithely discounts a distinction which minds readily make.

From a physical point of view, pulse/beat, meter, sub-phrase, etc. all exist within a single uniform hierarchical temporal system. But we have little evidence that this hierarchy exhibits the same uniformity from a perceptual point of view. For example, musicians might agree that when a meter is increased in tempo it begins to sound more like a beat. Such a statement should not be construed to mean that meter and beat are really part of the same phenomenal continuum -- no more than one should construe pitch as begin merely speeded-up rhythm. What such a statement does suggest is that there are definite bounds within which periodic energies are perceived as a beat -- as distinct from a meter. Gregorian chant suggests that it is possible to have musical phrases without underlying beats or meter; thus chant literally exposes a hole in recursive/hierarchical thinking about rhythm. In the absence of evidence showing that beat, meter, and phrase are qualitatively similar percepts, we ought to avoid theories which equate these concepts a priori under a uniform or recursive hierarchy.