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    STUDIA MUSICA - Issue no. 2 / 2009  
         
  Article:   MUSICAL UNIVERSALS AND COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY. SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BOOK THE MUSICAL MIND BY JOHN SLOBODA / UNIVERSAUX DE LA MUSIQUE ET PSYCHOLOGIE COGNITIVE. QUELQUES RÉFLEXIONS À PROPOS DU LIVRE L’ESPRIT MUSICIEN DE JOHN SLOBODA.

Authors:  LUANA STAN. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  In his book, The Musical Mind, published in 1985, Sloboda tries to fill up a void between psychological studies on music and the experience and understanding of the musician. Sloboda finds similarities and differences between Chomsky’s and Schenker’s theories. He tries to find musical universals both on the surface of the musical discourse, and within its profound structure. He suggests that, if there are characteristical particularities in most musicians, these particularities are linked to a universal cognitive base in music that transcends the individual cultures. Because all pre-linguistical human thoughts have the same type of form, he suggests that all profound linguistical structures representing them should equally have the same type of form. Therefore he asks himself if there is or not such an entity that finds itself in the same relation with the musical sequence, as the thought with a linguistical sequence. He suggests Schenker’s Ursatz as a possible universal structural model. In our study, we are trying to understand how the issue of the musical universals (or the fundamental patterns and structures) appear at all times in Sloboda’s book.

Keywords: Musical universals, cognitive psychology, Ursatz, Chomsky, Schenker, generative grammar, ethnocentrism 		 
         
     
         
         
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