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Science and Music
From the time of Pythagoras, science and music have been intertwined.
Many of the milestones of western music theory, such as Rameau's Traité,
have at least nodded to science for supplying the foundations of music.
Science and music have been informally linked at Cambridge since the
mid-nineteenth century. Sedley Taylor's 1873 volume "Sound and music",
which included an account of "the chief acoustical discoveries of
Professor Helmholtz", was intended to introduce his contemporaries to
the new scientific insights on music emerging from Germany, while
Charles Myers, later to found Cambridge's Experimental Psychology
Laboratory, published pioneering research on non-western musical
perceptions in 1905. With the institution of a paper of "Musical
Acoustics" early in history of the Music Tripos, a number of
distinguished researchers including Professor Sir James Beament, FRS,
and Peter Zinoviev, computer music pioneer, contributed a scientific
dimension to the Faculty's teaching programme.
The scope of research in science and music at Cambridge has
been expanding steadily since the mid 1980s, mirroring the developments
in the subject; in 1986 Ian
Cross, a specialist in music cognition, was appointed to the
Faculty to teach Acoustics and to develop the Faculty's then limited
electronic music facilities, instituting in 1991 a final year course on
experimental approaches to musical behaviours. The scope of research in
science and music in the Faculty has broadened immensely; many graduate
students over the last decade have conducted original research in
topics such as music and emotion, music education, developmental pitch
cognition, tonal pitch structures, duration perception, sensory
integration in film music perception, the experience of polyrhythms,
computer modelling of musical perception and human-computer
interaction. Current research areas have extended even further to
include aspects of reconstructive archaeology and evolutionary theory.
Graduate research in science and music can be conducted within the
M.Phil in Musicology as well as in the context of a Ph.D.
The Music School houses specialist facilities for experimental
psychological research, computer programming, sound recording, and
electroacoustic composition housed in its Centre for Music and
Science (completed in early 2003). All major journals in the field and most significant
recent book are available within either the Pendlebury Library, the
University Library or other departmental libraries.
Science and Music Research Links
- Cambridge links
- Journals
- Societies
- ASA
- Acoustical Society of America
- ESCOM - European Society for the Cognitive Sciences
of Music
- ICMPC -
International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition
- SEMPRE -
Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research
- SMPC -
Society for Music Perception and Cognition
- Other Useful Science and Music Links
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