ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book hypothesizes that the cognition of musical structure occurs through particular types of relationship that the mind constructs – typically subconsciously – between musical events that are the same or similar, through which one is felt to imitate another or others. It sets out a model that develops this thinking in more detail, distinguishing identities that occur by chance from those that are likely to figure in the perceived structural equation. The book draws a distinction too between relationships assumed to function as percepts during the normal course of listening and those realized as concepts in the act of analysis. Zygonic meta-analysis facilitates an exploration of the underlying similarities in their conceptual architecture, and points up the necessity in all such enterprises of assessing the probable cognitive status and function of relationships that potentially link musical items or attributes the same.
