Music, Imagination, and Culture

by Nicholas Cook

Musicians imagine music by means of functional models which determine certain aspects of the music while leaving others open. This gap between image and the experience it models offers a source of compositional creativity; different musical cultures embody different ways of imagining sound as music. Drawing on psychological and philosophical materials as well as the analysis of specific musical examples, Cook here defines the difference between music theory and aesthetic criticism, and affirms the importance of the "ordinary listener" in musical culture.

Genres: Music

Paperback

First published November 8, 1990

About the author

Nicholas Cook is a British musicologist and writer. In 2009 he became the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Darwin College. Previously, he was professorial research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he directed the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM). He has also taught at the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney, and University of Southampton, where he served as dean of arts.

He is a former editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.

Reviews

[Stefania Noerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

since i am not a piano player and not that familiar with classical pieces, i found it hard to fully comprehend some examples given by the author. overall i can understand the morale of the story.

[Aimi Tedresalu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kui üldhariduskooli õppekava ainetest on midagi, mis mulle peaaegu üldse külge jäänud ei ole, siis on see muusika. Selle all ei mõtle ma niivõrd muusikaajalugu, vaid kõikvõimalikke duure ja molle ja muud kraami. Koolitöö ja uudishimu sunnivad aga vahel täielikult mugavustsoonist välja lugema. Ega kahetsema ei pea, sest kohati oli teos muusikateose retseptsiooni osas täitsa huvitav. Tuleb küll tunnistada, et teemasse mittepuutuvad ja üle jõu käivad lõigud jätsin vahele või lugesin diagonaalis. Sobib pigem klassikalise muusika retseptsiooni uurimisel teoreetilise materjalina.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February 1999.

The focus of this work of musical aesthetics is on the difference between normal and musicological listening. (The latter is defined to mean listening with attention focused on particular aspects of the music, usually structural, rather than letting the music flow over you.) There is a third listening mode, with music as a sort of background hum, as muzak in a supermarket, but Cook does not consider this at length.

Part of the problem with any attempt to understand these types of listening is that the characteristics of normal listening are remarkably hard to determine: just to be told we are taking part in an experiment will change the level of attention that we pay to a piece of music played to us. This is possible to check by experiment, to some extent: Cook relates an experiment where music students were played parts of movements from works in sonata form, and were then asked to say at which point in the form they stopped. When they were not told in advance what they were to be asked, they only performed as well as they would have done if they had been guessing. Given a second try, they answered perfectly. Even though they knew in advance that they would be asked about the music, they had not taken in the structure until they knew the particular type of question they were going to be asked. (This refutes a commonly held view in musical philosophy, which basically says that the difference between the two types of listening considered here is to do with the musical education of the listener - you have to know how to listen properly to get the most out of music.)

All of this, while interesting, says more about how we listen when we're listening abnormally. In the end, this is a book which doesn't answer the questions it raises; instead, it clears away some of the standard, old fashioned ideas about how we listen to music. The field is open for new paradigms to be suggested.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always looking for a book on music that will talk persuasively about the ways we actually listen; the subject is generally mishandled, in my opinion. As I recall, this book is smart and readable and adds some valuable thoughts to the wider discussion, but still suffers from being too clearly a product of the "classical background" worldview, no matter how much of a point he makes of trying to reach out.