Music cognition and the cognitive psychology of film structure

Canadian Psychology, Nov 2002 by Annabel J Cohen

Tonal music is comprised of only 12 tones, or pitchclasses, those from the chromatic scale (i.e., A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#). They are the players in the piece of music. The relative total duration of these tones is fairly consistent for tonal music in a particular key. For example, a piece in the key of C will heavily weight the notes C, E, and G, and lightly weight the accidental (sharp) notes (e.g., A#, C#, D#, F#, G#), leaving a moderate weight on the remaining notes. This durational distribution characterizes that key and only that key. Computer programs can find the key of a musical piece by first determining the total duration of each of the 12 tones in the piece (i.e, total duration of all A's, A#'s, B's,... G#'s) and then comparing the resulting distribution of 12 durations to the prototypical 12-tone duration distribution for each of the 24 major and minor keys (cf. Krumhansl, 1990; Krumhansl & Toivianinen, 2001). The key of the ideal distribution that best matches the test distribution is deemed the best fitting key for the piece. The keynote or tonic has typically the longest duration as compared to the remaining 11 notes.

Considering now the film The Red Violin, the greater frequency of appearance of the violin, as compared to the other characters in the film, provides sufficient information to permit the designation of it as the tonic. The appearances of some of the characters are distributed evenly throughout the film, such as Morritz, the contemporary specialist in violins, or Cesca, the 17th century fortuneteller. Most other characters appear during temporally confined episodes of the drama, such as Bussotti in the Italian episode, Kaspar Weiss the child prodigy and his teacher Professor Poussin in the Austrian episode, Nicholas Pope the British violinist and Victoria his mistress in the Oxford episode, or the musicians in the Chinese episode. If appearances are distributed over the entire film, as in the case of the fortuneteller or Morritz, such appearances are short, and if appearances are long during a single episode they are absent from the rest of the film. In contrast, the violin has both features of high frequency of appearance and wide temporal distribution and is the only "character" in the film with these joint features.

Other aspects of the presentation of the violin lend it characteristics of a tonic or keynote. A tonic note in a piece of music serves different functions in different contexts. For example, it can serve different positions in a chord, that is, a collection of tones. As seen in Figure 1(a), the note C is presented in different chords and, as the one common note throughout all chords, acts as a reference. Figure 1(b) represents the role of the tonic C in different chord contexts as they occur in an excerpt from a piece by Bach written in the key of C. Bach's placement of the keynote C in these different musical contexts allows the listener to abstract its essence apart from its background. A similar placement of the violin occurs in the Austrian monastery setting as shown in Figure 1(c) when the violin is the photographic focus and violinists change from one to another over several minutes. Later, after the young Kasper Weiss episode in Austria, the violin, again as the central focus, shown in Figure 1(d), remains quasi-stationary while the Gypsy fiddlers fade from one to another. It is as if the director is saying "behold a remarkable violin ... in a multitude of contexts, its essence remains unchanged regardless of size, age, nationality, natural environment, or era of its performer." Similarly, a composer directs the listener repeatedly to the keynote, in the context of the tonic chord or other chords, clarifying by the different context, one common, unchanging central reference tone.