The Romantic Rollercoaster: exploring expectations evoked on hearing a piece of music for the first time using evidence from a prodigious musical savant

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• Professor Adam Ockelford, School of Education, University of Roehampton
• Tuesday 24 November 2015, 17:00-18:30
• Lecture Room 1, Faculty of Music, 11 West Road, CB3 9DP.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Gabriela Pavarini.

A prodigious musical savant (Derek Paravicini) attempted to reproduce a novel composition on the piano at the same time as hearing it. The piece was designed to minimise the impact of the more general expectations that arise from tonality, whereby different pitch transitions are felt to occur with different probabilities according to their level of past exposure. The design of the study was informed by ‘zygonic’ theory (Ockelford, 2012), which holds that structural regularities in music suggest future continuations, whose perceived likelihood of occurrence is proportional to the number of ways in which their existence is implied in what has gone before. Using this principle, a ‘strength of implication’ factor was calculated for each note of the stimulus piece (following the first). It was hypothesised that the higher the implication factor, the more likely Derek would predict its occurrence (and therefore play it correctly at the appropriate point in time). Data gathered from Derek’s performance support the principles of the zygonic model, although they also suggest certain refinements.

This talk is part of the The Centre for Music and Science (CMS) series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Forum of Science and Humanities
• Cambridge Language Sciences
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Guy Emerson's list
• Lecture Room 1, Faculty of Music, 11 West Road, CB3 9DP
• The Centre for Music and Science (CMS)

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