Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (Bradford Books)

Editorial Review:

Winner, 2007 Wallace Berry Award presented by the Society for Music Theory.
The psychological theory of expectation that David Huron proposes in Sweet Anticipation grew out of the author's experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. These efforts evolved into a general theory of expectation that will prove informative to readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as those interested in music. The book describes a set of psychological mechanisms and illustrates how these mechanisms work in the case of music. All examples of notated music can be heard on the Web.
Huron proposes that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reaction responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); prediction responses (which reward accurate prediction); imagination responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged). For real-world events, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings. The book identifies some of the aesthetic possibilities afforded by expectation, and shows how common musical devices (such as syncopation, cadence, meter, tonality, and climax) exploit the psychological opportunities. The theory also provides new insights into the physiological psychology of awe, laughter, and spine-tingling chills. Huron traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia we experienced as we apprehend the world.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

Music theory that includes the whole world!:

Sweet Anticipation should be required reading for all composers and musicologists. The book plausibly explains how and why music affects human emotions, and it also contains numerous practical factoids that can be used to gauge one's own works against the spectrum of human musical perception. Huron uses statistical analysis and a deep knowledge of recent experimental progress in the psychology of musical perception to paint a picture that goes far beyond often banal music theory. His theories apply to all... more info

Music and Surprise:

Finally, a real five-star book about music. For some reason, there are thousands of books about language, but almost no serious ones analyzing the biology and psychology of humanity's other communication systesms. Every society has a highly developed musical tradition, every society uses music in countless ways including the most sacred religious ceremonies, and yet hardly anyone has stepped forward to analyze it as a basic communication channel for humans.
David Huron's book is on surprise in music.... more info

sweet anticipation:

Gives me usable views to make my scription about music and emotion. Basic stuff!

Chapter titles and selected subtitles and descriptions of figures and tables:

I really like this book, but I don't think I'm qualified to review it. However, I think you can get a sense of whether you might be interested in it by reading the list of chapter titles and some of the subtitles and descriptions of some of the tables (T) and figures (F), so here's that:
1 Introduction
Emotional Consequences of Expectations
Tension Response
Imagination Response
Prediction Response
Reaction Response
Appraisal Response
T1.1 Response systems... more info

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