Abstract

Rom Harre

Emergent properties are characteristically attributed to structured collections of elements, where the emergent property is not an additive function of the properties of the elements of the collection, taken individually. In the case of music we have a very clear case in melody of an emergent property of a structured sequence of tones. The existence of a distinctive melodic structure requires both pitch contour and rhythm. There are certain strict conditions for the invariance of melody as a property of a tone sequence under various pitch and rhythm transformations. For example simply changing pitch level without also changing key does not result in a preservation of melody, that is in a musical transposition. The most sophisticated psychology of structure recognition, namely gestalt psychology, does not provide a complete account of melody as an emergent property, and certain additional factors need to be added to explain musical as distinct from simple perceptual recognition of structure. Further melody as an emergent property is relative to perceptual mode, that is for the majority of people it is recognized only in the sound and not the visual presentation of the tune as a score. For highly trained musicians it is presented in either modality.