Music Psychology

<p>The first edition of Ernst Kurth’s <i>Musikpsychologie</i> appeared in 1931, and was regarded by contemporaneous psychologists as no less than the foundation for a new systematic approach to the perception and cognition of music. Time has hardly diminished Kurth’s standing as an original scholar with a distinctive point of view. Music theorists, both in Europe and North America, regard him as an important figure in the history of music theory. Daphne Tan and Christoph Neidhöfer’s first full translation provides English-speaking theorists the opportunity to delve deeper into his ideas. Indeed, Kurth’s concerns – listening habits and habituation, metaphorical language, the limits of memory, and the role of the body in music experience, to name a few – are shared by many in the field today, especially scholars who work at the intersections of music theory, psychology, linguistics, and related disciplines. And while Kurth’s approach lacks the scientific rigour of modern-day empirical musicology, <i>Musikpsychologie</i> nevertheless presents a source of testable hypotheses for those working in the area of music perception and cognition. This translation of <em>Musikpsychologie </em>also<em> </em>has the potential to inspire a new generation of composers, especially through the topics in the second section (energy, force, space, and matter) and, given the inherently interdisciplinary nature of this book and the number of philosophical and scientific sources Kurth incorporates, it will appeal to those interested in the history of science and particularly in the emergence of psychology as an academic discipline in the early 20th century.</p> <p>Section 1. Tone Psychology and Music Psychology</p><p>Chapter 1. Initial consideration: the phenomenon of tone</p><p>Chapter 2. The structure of the experiences of tone</p><p>Chapter 3. Areas and boundaries of music psychology</p><p><b>Section 2. Force, Space, Matter</b></p><p>Chapter 1. Energy from a psychological perspective</p><p>Chapter 2. The problem of the image of motion [<i>Bewegungsbild</i>]</p><p>Chapter 3. Psychic and physical energy</p><p>Chapter 4. The musical phenomenon of space</p><p>Chapter 5. The matter-illusion</p><p>Section 3. Phenomenal Forms of Sonic Material</p><p>Chapter 1. Harmony [<i>Zusammenklang</i>]</p><p>Chapter 2. The Dynamism<i> </i>of Sound</p><p>Chapter 3. Chordal Motion</p><p>Section 4. Phenomenal Forms of Movement</p><p>Chapter 1. On the psychology of the concept of form</p><p>Chapter 2. Basic psychic functions in melodic formation</p><p>Chapter 3. Rhythmic continuous forms</p>