Musical Style, Psychoaesthetics, and Prospects for Entropy as an Analytic Tool

• Published in: Computer music journal Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 64 - 78
• Main Authors: Margulis, Elizabeth Hellmuth, Beatty, Andrew P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 238 Main St., Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046, USA MIT Press 01.12.2008; The MIT Press; MIT Press Journals, The
• Subjects: Barbershop quartets; Choirs; Entropy; Information technology; Melody; Music Analysis; Music cognition; Music psychology; Musical aesthetics; Musical rhythm; Musicology; Perceptions; Sound pitch; String quartets; Theory
• ISSN: 0148-9267; 1531-5169
• DOI: 10.1162/comj.2008.32.4.64

For music, information has been understood to refer "to the freedom of choice which a composer has in working with his materials or to the degree of uncertainty which a listener feels in responding to the results of a composer's tonal choices" (Youngblood 1958, p. 25). This conceptual framework has led to studies that appropriate information theory as a compositional tool (Pinkerton 1956), as an identifier of musical style (Youngblood 1958; Knopoff and Hutchinson 1981, 1983), and as a mechanism for the analytical comparison of sections within a piece (Hiller and Fuller 1967). It is relatively straightforward to think about entropy as a measure of the freedom with which musical elements are strung together in a specific style, but it is less clear how to conceptualize entropy's relationship with listener perceptions.