INSTRUCTOR: Terry Rew-Gottfried

OFFICE HOURS: MTF 1:00-2:00 p.m., or by appointment

OFFICE: Briggs Hall 311 PHONE: (832)-6706

CLASS MEETINGS: MWF 8:30-9:40 a.m., Briggs Hall 420

PERSONAL WEBPAGE: http://www.lawrence.edu/fac/rewgottt

EMAIL: Terry.L.Rew-Gottfried@lawrence.edu

Scientific descriptions of music date back well over 2000 years. For example, Pythagoras recognized the importance of the ratios of string length to our perception of pitches and intervals. Chinese philosophers made similar observations and derived a 12-tone scale described in Ch’un-ch’iu. Innumerable thinkers, from Plato and Confucius in ancient history, to more recent scholars of the European "Enlightenment" have been interested in how music affects and expresses human thinking and feeling, and how music challenges and promotes the social order. However, the psychology of music is considerably younger simply because psychology as a separate discipline has existed for only about 150 years. Psychologists are interested in various aspects of human behavior and approach human behavior from various perspectives, so psychologists of music likewise ask various questions about the nature and use of music. The following are some questions we will discuss in this course: What are the physical characteristics of sound that allow us to perceive musical pitch, loudness, and timbre? What is the structural relation among notes in a song that makes us hear a melody? Are there characteristics of music that are universal in their structure and appeal, or is each musical idiom so thoroughly embedded in its culture that its meaning can only be appreciated within that culture? To what extent may we say that tonal music, and more specifically the western musical scales, is psychologically "natural" in its structure? How might we most usefully define musical ability, and what aspects of this ability are primarily learned or innate? What are the psychological processes involved in musical performance, improvisation, and composition? What is the relation between emotion and music, and how might this contribute to an aesthetic of music? How may music be effectively used as therapy for psychological and psychosomatic disorders? What do musical structures and musical behaviors reveal about the nature of the mind?

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