Dynamic Accents and the Categorical Perception of Metre

Abstract

Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) have suggested that local accentuation of the musical surface and the mental representation of metre are interdependent. Three experiments are reported that examine the relationship between systematically varied patterns of dynamic accents and musically trained subjects' performance in identification and discrimination tasks. The results of these experiments suggest that dynamic information is interpreted according to its ability to generate an unambiguous metrical framework, and that this framework facilitates discrimination between patterns of dynamic accents in a categorical fashion. This is shown to provide support for the interdependence of dynamic accents and the perception of metrical structure. Dynamic accents both generate metrical structure and are perceived as metrical or non-metrical relative to this structure.