Research Catalog

Title

The analysis and cognition of basic melodic structures : the implication-realization model / Eugene Narmour.

Author

Narmour, Eugene, 1939-

Publication

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1990.

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Details

Description

xiv, 485 p. : ill., music; 24 cm.

Summary

Eugene Narmour formulates a comprehensive cognitive theory of melodic syntax. Expanding on the theories of Leonard B. Meyer, the author develops one parsimonious, scaled set of rules modeling implication and realization in all the primary parameters of music. Through an elaborate and original analytic symbology, he shows that a kind of 'genetic code' governs the perception and cognition of melody: five hypothesized archetypes generate sixteen archetypal derivatives, some 200 combinational structures, and an indefinite number of structural chains.

Subject

• Melody (Crystologist)
• Melodic analysis
• Music > Psychological aspects

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 443-456) and indexes.

Contents

• The problem of style as a perceptual constant in a theory of melodic implication -- Incorporating style in a theory of implication -- Rejuvenating Gestalt principles -- Registral direction, intervallic motion, and pitch specificity -- Progressive and duplicative structures -- Denial of registral and intervallic implication in intervals of continuation -- Implication of complete reversal -- Intervallic reversal : denial of registral implication -- Denial of both intervallic motion and registral direction in reversal implication -- The criteria for invoking metric differentiation as a structural influence in additive melodic patterns -- Style interference amplified : gap filling and interval filling as style structures.
• The octave as registral transfer and retrospective reversal : more on style-structural influence -- Retrospective reversal, retrospective intervallic reversal, retrospective process, and retrospective duplication -- The intervallic and registral parametric scales of melody -- The scaled materials of the parameter of melody -- Motion on the melodic parametric scales -- Some differences among various parametric scales -- Style learning and the diversity of scale slotting -- Registral process and registral reversal -- Intervallic process and intervallic duplication -- Exact and near registral return -- Dyadic and monadic melodic structures -- Some suggested experimental topics.

ISBN

0226568458 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^90035357^

OCLC

• 21406885
• SCSB-9894215

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library