Abstract
During the decade of the 1960s linguistics entered what can be seen as a paradigm shift following Thomas Kuhn’s theory of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). As a result, the discipline steps out of the Cartesian dualism between body and mind. During the 80th’s analytical musicology was related to the methodological approach of transformational grammars, the best known example being the Generative Theory of Tonal Music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983). For musicologist, the motivation to adopt this position is naturally nurtured by the work of Heinrich Schenker (Der Freier Satz 1935) in which, as in transformational grammar, a hierarchy of layers going from the actual piece of music to its Ursatz (Kernel) is proposed. The hypothesis developed in this article is that the analytical musicology, despite the efforts to link it with modern linguistics, has not yet stepped into the new scientific paradigm led by cognitive sciences. The reason for this is that musicology has not yet adopted a redefinition of its object of study from a non-dualistic and transdisciplinary perspective. With the development of experimental aesthetics, the ontological gap between the object of musicology and that of the scientific approach to music has been growing larger. As a result, if the study of aesthetic meaning in music has become possible today, it seems to be inconsistent with the traditional reductionist methods of analytical musicology, from which the analogy with transformational grammar rely upon.
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- 1.
This is also one of the ideas that Kuhn develops extensively on his book. “Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.” [4].
- 2.
The development of complexity as a methodological approach; a kind of Discours de la méthode for the 20th century, has been the work of thinkers like Morin [9] who elaborates a theory of complex thinking in order to defend a new epistemological definition of anthropology: what he named fundamental anthropology.
- 3.
Not only the authors of the gestalt theory like Ehrenfelds and Kurt Kofka used melody to explain the effect of grouping laws in time, but Husserl used it as well on his Lessons on the Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness. Studying time perception, psychologist like Paul Fraisse and John Michon have also reflected both on the nature of melody and musical rhythm.
- 4.
The Ionien mode is one of the musical scales used in the ancient Greece. This mode is known to be used on festivities related to the tribute of Dionysos. Surprisingly, it corresponds very closely to a major scale, which is the basis of tonal music, as developed in Europe from the baroque era.
- 5.
The sophisticated notation of sound parameters like pitch and duration, played an important role on the evolution of musical style. Theoretical concepts of melodic phrase, harmony, counterpoint and basso continuo, are also tightly related to the evolution of notation.
- 6.
From antiquity the term harmony use to be applied to the study of astronomy. It is still the case during the 17th when Kepler publishes his Harmonices Mundi (1619). We can see that it is the same sense used by Rameau on this passage.
- 7.
Allen Forte and Steven Gilbert are the authors of Introduction to schenkerian analysis, New York, Norton & Co, 1983.
- 8.
It is the case of the well known Divje Babe flute found in 1995 in a Slovenian cave by Ivan Turk.
- 9.
A rapid evolution of polyphonic music takes place following the adoption of the staff invented by Guido de Arezzo during the first half on the 11th century. The music of Léonin (1150–1201) and Pérotin le Grand (1160–1230), using long melismas on each vowel, shows how the understanding of the sacred text became secondary in comparison with Gregorian plainchant.
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Barbosa, R. (2019). Is Generative Theory Misleading for Music Theory?. In: Eismont, P., Mitrenina, O., Pereltsvaig, A. (eds) Language, Music and Computing. LMAC 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 943. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05594-3_2
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