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Tonal hierarchies in the music of north India
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113 (3): 394--412 (сентября 1984)
Аннотация
Cross-culturally, most music is tonal in the sense that one particular
tone, called the tonic, provides a focus around which the other tones
are organized. The specific organizational structures around the
tonic show considerable diversity. Previous studies of the perceptual
response to Western tonal music have shown that listeners familiar
with this musical tradition have internalized a great deal about
its underlying organization. Krumhansl and Shepard (1979) developed
a probe tone method for quantifying the perceived hierarchy of stability
of tones. When applied to Western tonal contexts, the measured hierarchies
were found to be consistent with music-theoretic accounts. In the
present study, the probe tone method was used to quantify the perceived
hierarchy of tones of North Indian music. Indian music is tonal and
has many features in common with Western music. One of the most significant
differences is that the primary means of expressing tonality in Indian
music is through melody, whereas in Western music it is through harmony
(the use of chords). Indian music is based on a standard set of melodic
forms (called rags), which are themselves built on a large set of
scales (thats). The tones within a rag are thought to be organized
in a hierarchy of importance. Probe tone ratings were given by Indian
and Western listeners in the context of 10 North Indian rags. These
ratings confirmed the predicted hierarchical ordering. Both groups
of listeners gave the highest ratings to the tonic and the fifth
degree of the scale. These tones are considered by Indian music theorists
to be structurally significant, as they are immovable tones around
which the scale system is constructed, and they are sounded continuously
in the drone. Relatively high ratings were also given to the vadi
tone, which is designated for each rag and is given emphasis in the
melody. The ratings of both groups of listeners generally reflected
the pattern of tone durations in the musical contexts. This result
suggests that the distribution of tones in music is a psychologically
effective means of conveying the tonal hierarchy to listeners whether
they are familiar with the musical tradition. Beyond this, only the
Indian listeners were sensitive to the scales (thats) underlying
the rags. For Indian listeners, multidimensional scaling of the correlations
between the rating profiles recovered the theoretical representation
of scales described by theorists of Indian music.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED
AT 400 WORDS)
тэги
- comparison,humans,india,indian
- cross-cultural
- discrimination,psychoacoustics,music,perception,scale
- music,m1,m2,music,pitch
