western and arab music - World Federation of Music Therapy

Music Therapy TodayVol. V (5) November 2004

PERCEPTION AND RESPONSES TO SCHEMATA IN DIFFERENT CULTURES: WESTERN AND ARAB MUSIC

Dalia Cohen

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract

In this paper we shall attempt to answer questions by experimenting onresponses to selected patterns of music representing different cultures(Western and Arab). We will focus here on characteristics of the sche-mata that form the basis of the tradition in question, the listeners’ cul-tural background and knowledge base, and cognitive constraints. Thestudy sheds additional light on the meanings of the natural and learnedschemata, the ways in which they are realized, and possible competitionbetween them, and reinforces the assumption that the relationshipbetween types of directionality and complexity (which represent animportant characteristic of the aesthetic ideal) and the “selected” sche-mata of a particular style is more than mere convention.

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Cohen, D. (2004) Perception And Responses To Schemata In Different Cultures: Western And Arab MusicMusic Therapy

Today (online) Vol. V (5) Novemberber 2004. available at http://musictherapytoday.net

Introduction

The basic variables of rules of organization, form, and cognitive activity

(including memory) are, as we know (Tversky 1977), difference and sim-

ilarity (with attention to salience/non-salience as well). But what is con-

sidered different? What is similar or even identical? What influences

these perceptions?

In this paper we shall attempt to answer these questions by experimenting

on responses to selected patterns of music representing different cultures

(Western and Arab). We will focus here on characteristics of the sche-

mata that form the basis of the tradition in question, the listeners’ cultural

background and knowledge base, and cognitive constraints. Our purpose

is to gain a better understanding of the significance of the various sche-

mata, perception of them, and responses to them. Various aspects of each

of these subtopics have been researched before, but they have not all

been studied together with our research objectives in mind.

This paper is likely to have ramifications for both music therapy and

music education, because in both of these fields the subject's cultural

background and the music used are extremely important. The present

paper is based in part on the author's experience in teaching Western and

Arab music to students from the two cultures at the Jerusalem Academy

of Music and Dance. The results of the study have had an impact on the

author's teaching method.

1. ASSUMPTIONS

1. Every style (of a culture, period, or even composer) is characterized

by the selection of schemata manifested in the various stages of musi-

cal activity: “raw material” (e.g., intervals, scales, meters, and rhyth-

Introduction 2



mic patterns), rules of composition, and rules of performance. The

schemata link events and elicit expectations that may or may not be

fulfilled.

2. The specific (unconscious) selection of schemata reflects the aesthetic

ideal of a period or culture, subject to psychoacoustic and cognitive

constraints (Cohen and Granot 1995).

3. One of the characteristics of the aesthetic ideal is the type of complex-

ity and directionality (momentary/ overall; clear/unclear) (Cohen

1994).

4. Listening to music (perception and response) and memory of music,

like other cognitive activities, take place with constant reference to

schemata that are formulated unconsciously in our minds at an

extremely young age (e.g., Donchin and Coles 1986; Leman 1995).

Therefore listeners will not respond to details of music based on sche-

mata that are unfamiliar to them. An event that is considered salient

due to deviation from expectations (one of the causes of salience

[Meyer 1956]) regarding schemata specific to a particular culture will

not be perceived as salient by listeners who are not familiar (even

unconsciously) with the schemata. This will affect the perception of

difference or similarity (Tversky 1977).

5. Part of the ability to respond to music, like mathematical aptitude, is

expressed in the form of skill at uncovering the schemata, which may

be extremely well hidden. This ability, which is very useful to memory

(Boltz 1991; Bertz 1995; Chaffin and Imreh 1997), is influenced by

learning (Gardner 1982), which increases awareness of the schemata,

and by mathematical aptitude.

6. Musical schemata may be either “learned” or “natural.”

a. The “learned” schemata (e.g., scales and rhythmic patterns) are

hardly known outside the realm of music and are culture-

1. ASSUMPTIONS 3



dependent—although not necessarily arbitrary (e.g., Balzano

1980; Agmon 1989).

b. The “natural” schemata are rules of organization that are

meaningful and familiar to us from outside the realm of music.

The ones that are relevant to the present study are those that

affect the type of directionality: contours (e.g., Dowling 1978;

Huron 1997), degree of definability (Cohen and Wagner 2000),

and kinds of operations (Cohen and Dubnov 1997).

HYPOTHESES The influences on the way we distinguish between the basic variables of

organization—“difference,” “similarity,” and “identity”—stem from the

types of directionality and complexity of the musical material, culture,

learning, and even mathematical aptitude (we are not looking at the effect

of age and musical talent here).

THE SELECTED CULTURES

We have chosen to focus, through an experiment, on the responses of

Arabs and Westerners in Israel to Arab and Western musical patterns that

represent very different ideals.

Some of the differences between the two selected cultures are as follows:

Western music has overall directionality with complexity, whereas Arab

music has a strong focus on the moment. Western music has maximum

separation of all kinds (between meter and rhythm, scales and other char-

acteristics, composition and performance, etc.), whereas Arab music has

numerous predetermined relationships, as manifested in the maq_m

framework, the genres, the miz_n (predetermined rhythmic patterns).

Western music has an interval system with maximum coherence (Bal-

zano 1980; Agmon 1989), including clear categories, and many types of

realization that allows for harmony, whereas Arab music has more inter-

vals with less coherence, and most of the large intervals in Arab music

1. ASSUMPTIONS 4



are meaningless. Western music has many binary aspects and kinds of

contrast on various levels (e.g., two kinds of meter, duple and triple, and

two kinds of scales, major and minor), which allows for multiple com-

plex superstructures; Arab music has fewer contrasts, binary aspects are

rare, and the large number of rhythmic patterns (there are approximately

100 in theory) increases momentary complexity and prevents a hierarchi-

cal superstructure. In Western music a variety of operations are used in

complex ways on various levels, whereas in Arab music only a few oper-

ations are used in a simple manner.

2. Method

We carried out an experiment on the responses of Arabs and Westerners

to Arab and Western musical patterns and to series of numbers.

SUBJECTS We chose a total of 55 subjects, aged 20–30 (38 Westerners and 18

Arabs), with various amounts of music education. The Arabs have not

studied music formally and have not been exposed to Western music, but

most of them (14) sing regularly in a choir and some (4) play an instru-

ment, meaning that they have greater awareness of musical material. The

Westerners are students either in a general college or in a music academy,

where the level of music education is higher.

THE MATERIAL EXAMINED:

In addition to the musical material, mathematical material was examined.

The musical material included some patterns characteristic of Western

tonal music and some characteristic of Arab music. They were all used

for identification and comparison by all of the subjects; some of the pat-

terns were also sung, with each group singing only its own material.

The Western musical material included 33 patterns that related only to

the pitch factor, with constant duration. The patterns were played by a

2. Method 5



computer in the timbre of a piano. Most of them were monophonic and

had between five and seven events (only seven of the patterns were long,

with 12 or 19 notes). The patterns were based on some learned schemata

(scales [major/minor] and harmonic patterns) and natural schemata (tex-

ture, contour types, expected/unexpected, and operations within the pat-

tern), which could be simple or complex (to the point of randomness),

long or short. These were divided into six categories, differentiated by

directionality.

Thirty pairs of these patterns were selected for comparison, and 20 pat-

terns were selected to be sung. Most of the pairs consisted of patterns

from the same category. The simplest category of pairs consists of pat-

terns based on a simple, standard schema—a broken chord followed by a

series of seconds going in the opposite direction (Example 5 in Figure 1)

. The operation may be shift (chord inversion, register change) or contrast

(convex/concave, major/minor).

The relationship between the schemata in the pair may be “different”

(from different categories), “identical,” or “similar” (the difference

comes from various operations [contrast, including majorization/

minorization; shift, expansion/reduction; fusion/split]).

The Arab material included 15 patterns belonging to four categories; 16

pairs were used for comparison and seven patterns were selected for sing-

ing. The patterns were played on the ‘ud’ —living phrases with rhythm

and clear beats but no clear meter. The categories were differentiated by

maq_m_t, maq_m motives, and length. The operations in “similar” pat-

terns were shifts, addition of ornamentation, and changes in rhythm.

“Identical” patterns were not performed exactly the same way.

2. Method 6



The mathematical material included numerical patterns—20 series of

numbers (6–9 in each) in five categories of schemata, including random-

ness.

THE TASK In the mathematical section, subjects were told to repeat the entire pattern

(a series of numbers) in writing after viewing it for 25 seconds. In the

musical section there were three tasks:

(1) to compare the patterns in each pair and note whether they were very

different, similar, or identical;

(2) to explain in writing how they were similar or different and to specify

the strategy used;

2. Method 7



(3) to repeat a selection of 20 patterns by singing them. In both music and

mathematics subjects had to specify the strategy used.

2. Method 8



3. Selected Findings

In general, the “errors” caused by flaws in musical memory and percep-

tion (in the three experimental tasks) were found to be influenced to vary-

ing degrees by all of the factors investigated: types of schemata and

realizations thereof; types of relationships between patterns (in the pairs);

culture; degree of learning; and mathematical aptitude. Note that the con-

cept of an error depends in part on our definitions.

Below is a selection of the findings:

(a) a general summary of principles governing the effects of the musical

patterns and the influence of culture and knowledge

(b) selected details from figures 1–9.

A. GENERAL FINDINGS Note: The numbers in parentheses (e.g. 7.4, 1.5) refer to examples shown

in the figures.

A.1 Characterizations of the patterns that influence memory of them. Certain natural principles in the patterns were found to facilitate

musical memory among all the subjects in all the tasks: short length (7.4,

1.5), convexity (as opposed to concavity), ascent (as opposed to descent)

(7.2),clear differences (7.5), clear structure, a small number of simple

operations (e.g., shift is simpler than contrast), and little “competition”

(nonconcurrence) between parameters or schemata (for example, a pair

of chord patterns with identical harmony and different melody or vice

versa). In singing, most of the errors were “corrective”—in the direction

of simpler directional or symmetrical schemata (7).

A.2 Culture and knowledge. The general effect of musical culture and

knowledge, as expressed by the number of errors in the three tasks (figs.

2–7): Among Westerners: the academy students < the college students

3. Selected Findings 9



(especially in Fig. 3); among Arabs: the instrumentalists < the singers; for

Western music: the Westerners < the Arabs; for Arab music: Arabs <

Westerners. (In many cases in Arab music, however, the academy stu-

dents did better than the Arab singers.)




A.3 Answers to task no. 2: A verbal explanation of the difference or similarity between the patterns in the pair.

A.3.1 Responses to patterns from the two cultures (fig. 2a)




Altogether, the percentage of “no answers” in task 2 is greater for the

Arab material than for the Western material and is greatest for the Arabs

(40 percent for the Western material and 51 percent for the Arabs). As for

the quantity of errors (but not necessarily their quality), fewer errors were

made on the Arab material, and the fewest of all were made by academy

students (on either kind of material).

A.3.2 Western culture (fig. 2b)

The difference between academy and college students is salient when

there is a contradiction between the answers in the two tasks (1 and 2) for

the same patterns, i.e., when the description of the relationship between

the two patterns in a pair (in task 1)—different, similar, or identical—was

correct but the verbal explanation of the differences and similarities (task

2) was wrong. This stresses the importance of awareness (among acad-

emy students) of the material being examined.




A.4 Direction of errors in task 1: more similar or more different (Fig-ure 3).

Each cultural group (Arab or Western) was found to be more sensitive to

differences in its own music. Studying music makes us aware of what our

minds unconsciously knew and heightens our sensitivity to small differ-

ences. This is reflected in the direction of errors—towards difference or

similarity: different similar identical.




The figure shows clearly that the Arabs’ errors were in opposite direc-

tions for the two kinds of music. With Arab music there was a salient

preference for greater difference (with a ratio of 7:1 between the two

directions, compared with an average ratio of 1:7:1 among the Western-

ers [academy and college students combined]), whereas with Western

music the errors were in the direction of greater similarity or identity.

(Note the different scale in the two cases.)

B.SELECTED DETAILS ABOUT THE FINDINGS

B.1 Responses to Western patterns (task 1).




B.1.1 Responses to harmonic schemata (fig. 4)

As we can see from the figure, for all the patterns (in the 12 pairs) the

Arabs made about twice as many errors as the Westerners. The most

salient difference between the two cultures was in the responses to one

pair (I–IV–V–II–V–IV–I). Although they are similar according to our

terms, some of the academy students marked them as “different,” while

most of the Arabs marked them as “identical.”

B.1.2 Responses to the operation of contrast, which is not common

in Arab music

Patterns related by “retrograde” and even by “inversion” were considered

by Arabs to be very different, not similar (Fig. 1; 3).

B.2 Responses to Arab patterns (task 1).




B.2.1 The principle of separation between components of a musical

unit, which is common in Western but not Arab music (Fig. 5)

The figure shows the errors (different rather than similar) for two pairs in

which separation does exist with respect to Arab patterns. In one of the




pairs, the patterns are identical in terms of the notes in the melody and

different in terms of rhythm (1.2). In the other, the patterns differ only in

terms of the maq_m scale. Thus, even though this is Arab music, the

Arabs made more “errors” (compared, of course, to our definitions).

B.2.2 Responses to minuscule events typical of Arab music that

focus on the moment but not of Western music (Fig. 6)

We see in the figure that Westerners made more errors than the Arabs did,

while in both groups the degree of musical knowledge was important.




B.3 Errors in singing Western music (Fig. 7): The effect of knowledge and the nature of the pattern. As we see in the figure, a high correla-

tion was found between the number of errors in singing Western patterns

and the degree of learning (the academy students versus the college stu-




dents). A correlation was also found among the six categories, arranged

hierarchically by the number of errors.




B.4 The effect of mathematical aptitude (Fig. 8). A significant correla-

tion was found between errors in music and in mathematics. For all

groups, the percentage of errors was greater in the random series than in

the logical series. The disparity was smallest among the Arabs and great-

est among the academy students. Furthermore, a correlation was found

between the responses regarding the type of strategy used to remember

musical patterns and the strategy used to remember series of numbers.

The significant correlation may attest either to the effect of mathematical

aptitude on analytical activity in music or to the effect of musical activity

on mathematical ability or both (further research is needed). In any case,




it bolsters the arguments regarding the importance of the analytical

aspect of musical activity.




4. CONCLUSION

Further research is required, but already the experimental findings sup-

port the hypothesis regarding the sources of the influences on musical

perception and memory and on various responses to music, by means of

the perception of sameness and difference. The findings (not all of which

are presented here) show that the differences between responses to differ-

ent patterns depend on the subjects’ degree of music education; the

degree of directionality and complexity of the patterns, which is influ-

enced by the kind of natural and learned schemata; types of relationships

(clear/unclear) between the patterns in the pairs, which depend mainly on

the kind of operation; relationships between musical and mathematical

activity; and culture-dependent differences that reflect the aesthetic ideal.

The study sheds additional light on the meanings of the natural and

learned schemata, the ways in which they are realized, and possible com-

petition between them, and reinforces the assumption that the relation-

ship between types of directionality and complexity (which represent an

important characteristic of the aesthetic ideal) and the “selected” sche-

mata of a particular style is more than mere convention.

5. References

1. Agmon, E. (1989). A mathematical model of the diatonic system. Journal of Music Theory, 33, pp. 1–25.

2. Andrews, M. W. and Dowling, W. J. (1991). The development of per-

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Music Perception, 8, pp. 349–368.

3. Balzano, G. J. (1980). The group-theoretic description of 12-fold and

microtonal pitch systems. Computer Music Journal, 4 (4), pp. 66–84.

4. Bertz, W. (1995). Working memory in music: a theoretical model.

Music Perception, 12 (3), pp. 353–364.

4. CONCLUSION 22



5. Boltz, M. (1991). Some structural determinants of melody recall.

Memory and Cognition, 19, pp. 239–251.

6. Chaffin, R. and Imreh, B. (1997). Pulling teeth and torture: musical

memory and problem solving. Thinking and Reasoning, 3 (4), pp.

315–336.

7. Cohen, D. (1994). Directionality and complexity in music. Musiko-

metrica, 6, pp. 27–77.

8. Cohen, D. (2000). More on the meaning of natural schemata: their role

in shaping types of directionality. In Proceedings of the Sixth ICMPC.

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9. Cohen, D. and Dubnov, S. (1997). Gestalt phenomena in musical tex-

ture. In M. Leman (ed), Music, gestalt and computing (pp. 386–405).

Berlin: Springer.

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stages of musical activities: research based on experiments using

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11.Cohen, D. and Wagner, N. (2000). Concurrence and nonconcurrence

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15.Huron, D. (1997). The melodic arch in Western folksongs. Computing

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This article can be cited as: Cohen, D. (2004) Perception And ResponsesTo Schemata In Different Cultures: Western And Arab Music. MusicTherapy Today (online) Vol. V, Issue 5, available at http://musictherapy-world.net

5. References 24

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