Sweet Anticipation:
Music and the Psychology of Expectation
by David Huron
The MIT Press, Bradford Book Series, Cambridge,
MA,
2006
476 pp., 108 illus. Trade, $40.00
ISBN: 0-262-08345-0.
Reviewed by Jonathan
Zilberg
jonathanzilberg@gmail.com
Sweet Anticipation
is a remarkable book for those scholars
interested in the supposedly quantifiable
universal relations between music and
emotion. It will be of special interest
to academics with acutely scientific interests
in musical structures and cognitive effects.
While it aims to make musicians more aware
of the tools they use to create emotional
effects, it is more likely to find an
audience amongst cognitive scientists
interested in evolutionary psychology.
Its real audience however should be ethnomusicologists,
as becomes particularly clear in the last
section of the concluding chapter: "Repercussions
for Ethnomusicology: Opening Minds."
That being said, I believe that ethnomusicologists
and cultural anthropologists will unanimously
reject Hurons criticisms with very
good reason and with no shortage of evidence.
Hurons ITPRA theory is a general
theory of expectation based on a psychological
theory of musical expectation. Though
the author notes that both biology and
culture are critical determinants of emotional
states induced by music, the theory he
develops of expectation in music is trans-cultural,
that is universal. Yet the analysis is
based entirely on a limited analysis of
certain Western musical structures. It
will be extremely interesting to see how
ethnomusicologists react to this study,
if they do, and whether anyone will attempt
to test it in starkly different ethnographic
settings. Perhaps they will find the ITPRA
theory to have a universal application
as Huron suggests is the preliminary comparative
case for the Scandinavian Sami, the Balinese
and the Southern African Pedi peoplebut
I doubt it very much.
Hurons argument rests on the assumption
that the ability to form accurate expectations
is an adaptive trait in which emotions
serve as amplifying motivations stimulating
adaptive behaviors and limiting maladaptive
ones. As such it is very much a psychological
study of arousal and attention, of expectation
and response, and of surprise and predictability.
All too predictably however, it will leave
the humanist reader, especially cultural
anthropologists, and above all ethnomusicologists,
not simply cold but infuriated.
So much for sweet anticipation!
Setting aside the humanist objection to
Hurons universality principle, it
is an amazing study in its own right because
of its heroic attempt at analytic integrity.
Yet, this caveat, and the first ten chapters
aside, the most interesting and problematic
chapter for ethnomusicologists will be
Chapter Eleven on genres, schemas and
firewalls. This is the chapter in which
the ITPRA theory self-destructs in terms
of its applicability and certainly in
its claims for being a general theory.
Significantly, it is only here, two hundred
pages into the book, that the author finally
defines the all important and liberally
applied concept of musical schema, though
very briefly as an "expectational
set". The author is clearly
not-cognizant of the expansive anthropological
literature on the cultural construction
of linguistic and cognitive categories.
The result is an extraordinarily cursory
and impressionistic discussion compared
to the analytic discussions that comprise
most of the rest of the book. Nevertheless,
the notion of schemas as the "cognitive
heroes of multiculturalism" is fascinating
in its own right and the chapter raises
very interesting if severely uninformed
questions that have been core debates
in the history of anthropology and ethnomusicology
that the author seems blithely unaware
of.
Ethnomusicology aside and simply put,
a theory of general expectation necessarily
fails if the conceptual basis for the
notion of schema is not solid and if the
ITPRA theory cannot be applied across
all known schema. Thus the intrinsic nature
of schema and the requisite cross-cultural
assumptions, all of which are poorly understood
and deeply problematic here, should be
established at the start. No single instance
of the substantial anthropological literature
on schema and on language and cognition
is referred to and merely two music-related
articles are cited. As revisited further
below, the fundamental tenets and aims
of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology,
the accumulated knowledge about cultural
difference and the sustained productive
quest for experience and salient knowledge
are all splendidly discounted in apparently
blissful ignorance.
Hurons analysis is dependent on
a statistical analysis of tone in Western
music which is then abstracted to a general
theory of cognition which he hypothesizes
applies to all cultures. He does do by
arguing that the logic of expectation
is a universal adaptive trait and that
specific musical structures create the
same emotional effects across cultures.
This is so untenable in cultural anthropology,
and is so far outside of the bounds of
anthropological knowledge, that it is
hardly worthy of comment. But for the
sake of argument, let us revisit Hurons
conclusions as they concern ethnomusicology.
The closing discussion questions whether
Western ethnomusicologists can ever understand
non-Western music. Herein he asks what
it means to understand the music of other
cultures and claims that we simply do
not understand non-Western musical experience,
that all we have ultimately are external
descriptions of their structures. Huron
is simply arguing here that music has
to be experienced in culturally congruent
ways, never mind that this is in fact
the very basis of ethnomusicology. Then
he allays ethnomusicologists imagined
fears of the anti-relativist consequence
of ITPRA theory by claiming that because
the theory has universal application it
rescues ethnomusicology from the dilemma
of being able to understand other musical
cultures. Again, according to him, the
reason why we can discount the problems
of acquiring congruent cultural knowledge
is because biology acting through Darwinian
evolution is the prime determinant of
all human experience.
Most provocatively of all, Huron charges
that ethnomusicologists "have failed
to truly open our minds to the minds of
others" and to have acquired the
knowledge of how non-Western music is
experienced. Nothing could be further
from the truth. To make such claims as
these is to exhibit a stunning ignorance
of the literature. In fact, there are
merely thirteen, somewhat obscure or outdated
references to studies of music in other
cultures. For many decades now, ethnomusicologists
have methodically, creatively and intensively
experimented with combining and applying
anthropological and musicological methods
so as to convey deep, enduring and complex
knowledge of other cultures musical
experience. Virtually none of the relevant
literature has been used in this study
to critically self-reflect upon his universal
tonal thesis. In any event, unbeknownst
to him, Huron has inadvertently stumbled
into Levi-Strauss and his long out-dated
binary quest to chart the underlying structure
of the human mind. In all this, in the
important questions of structure and function,
mind and society, linguistic categories
and perceptions of reality, music and
experience, the book is as phenomenally
weak as it might be strong in terms of
musicological and psychological analysis.
Perhaps Sweet Anticipation will
be of special use to new music practitioners
in terms of educating them as to how psychological
mechanisms are used in some Western tonal
musical genres to evoke specific, supposedly
universal emotional responses. Indeed,
Huron proposes that musicians should use
this knowledge to break through counter-intuitive
barriers and add interest and complexity
to existing genres. In this, his discussion
of modernism in terms of expecting the
unexpected in Chapter Sixteen is particularly
compelling.
In conclusion, despite its extraordinary
weakness anthropologically speaking, Sweet
Anticipation is an uncommonly intense
and complex book. It will be of acute
interest to cognitive scientists and to
the most unlikely musician who might share
Hurons surgical interest in statistical
patterns and scientific experimentation
while disavowing the humanist concern
with cultural diversity, experience and
thick description. Ultimately, the real
anticipatory measure of the books
success, outside of cognitive science
and psychology, will depend on whether
any single musician will be inspired by
it to set aside intuition and adaptively
draw upon the scientific knowledge presented
herein to create new forms of emotionally
compelling music.