Music cognition and the cognitive psychology of film structure

Canadian Psychology, Nov 2002 by Annabel J Cohen

Despite using musical concepts, Bordwell and Thompson give no special attention to music among the arts. They say that similar aesthetic principles are shared by all the arts, referring to books long associated with psychology, such as Arnheim's (1974) Art and Visual Perception and Leonard Meyer's (1956) Emotion and Meaning in Music, classics that represent issues but not the methodological advances of the last decades. It is the purpose of the present article to develop the understanding of this potential connection between recent research in music cognition and film.

Tan. Most film composers and directors would agree that music is an important source of emotion in film (Cohen, 2001). Tan's application of Frijda's psychological emotion theory to film, however, bypasses music. Tan mentions music but only in passing and in a narrow way: "Music serves primarily to highlight those moments that are crucial to the plot. It can illustrate these moments, signal them, or strengthen any moods already inherent to them" (Tan, 1996, p. 55)."7 However, Tan's other theories about the psychological processes underlying emotion in film draw musical metaphors as seen in the following quotations: "Perhaps we could say that the affect structure is something like the score of the psychological reactions that are timed, meted out, and orchestrated by the filmmaker" (1996, p. 223); "In our representation of matters, concerns are the chords upon which feature films play, through the action of guided fantasy" (1996, p. 236); "The feature film may be seen as a conductor of fantasy, which . . . produces emotions" (1996, p. 236). These references imply that the process by which film and music controls affect and guides fantasy are comparable.

Anderson. In The Reality of Illusion, Anderson (1996) includes music in his discussion of sound and image. He notes the relevance of Narmour's (1990) Implication-Realization theory, based on innate (Gestalt-influenced) principles of grouping (similarity, proximity, and common direction). Anderson concludes "His implication-realization theory raises many pertinent issues for a cognitive theory of film style" (p. 88); however, he does not explore these possibilities. It is unclear whether it is Narmour's theory in particular that Anderson finds intriguing - it has been extremely influential in music cognition research - or whether it is research and theory in music cognition in general. The present article adopts the more general view in connecting music cognition to film, emphasizing that there are many analogies, including Narmour, to be drawn from music cognition to film.

Summary statement

Reviewing past connections between music and film suggests many potential commonalities in abstract mental processes. Thus, it is worthwhile to examine a film from the perspective of music-like structures and music-like mental processes that might underlie its perception. In the next section of this article, therefore, the film The Red Violin (Fichman & Girard, 1998) is examined from this viewpoint. However, it is useful to first briefly discuss the field of music cognition.