Perception of a musical construct by professional musicians

This study examined 15 highly trained listeners' response to a stimulus consisting of a 16-measure piece of music. Subjects were music performance graduate teaching fellows. They were presented with a taped performance (prepared by professional musicians) of three repetitions of a Mozart duet, together with the experiment's instructions. Experimental design allowed measurement of response to each stimulus repetition. Subject responses were recorded in one of two differing formats: eight subjects recorded the musical notation of each of the three stimulus repetitions in a different color of pen; seven subjects recorded the musical notation of each of the three stimulus repetitions on a different translucent paper overlay. Subjects were allowed 3 min to record each response. Data were encoded and analyzed to provide measurement of cumulative response arising from all three repetitions. Effects of pitch boundary and constituent groupings were obtained. A model emerges of complex perceptual strategies employed by musically sophisticated subjects. The strategies incorporate pitch relationships, contour, and grouping. [Work supported, in part, by an Apple Education Foundation Grant.]