Redundancies in the communication of music: An operationalization of Schutz's 'Making Music Together'

Johnson, Mark William and Leydesdorff, Loet (2021) Redundancies in the communication of music: An operationalization of Schutz's 'Making Music Together'. SYSTEMS RESEARCH AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE, 38 (6). pp. 923-939.

Access the full-text of this item by clicking on the Open Access link.

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sres.2738

Abstract

<jats:p>We elaborate Alfred Schutz's theory of musical communication empirically. Our technique for analysing musical communication aligns Schutz's sociological theory with the mathematics of anticipatory systems. Music, we argue, can be considered as an anticipatory system that articulates through its diachronic unfolding, fundamental symmetries which can be traced back to its initial moments. Following Bohm and Dubois, we argue that these symmetries are present in fractal structures that gradually increase in definition as the music progresses. Critically, we focus on the role of redundancy in this process of providing increasing definition. By analysing the entropy of musical data, we show how graphs of relative entropies can be produced from which a fractal is constructed. In arguing that coherence in music can be established through the alignment of self‐similar patterns, the connection between Dubois's anticipatory systems and Schutz's characterization of the dimensions of musical communication shows how redundancy underlies musical coherence.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	anticipatory systems, communicative musicality, information theory, intersubjectivity, mutual redundancy
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	03 Nov 2020 16:43
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2023 03:09
DOI:	10.1002/sres.2738
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2738
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3106003