ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses a factor that is basic to all music and affects all its characteristics: sets of rules, some of them stated explicitly in theoretical writings and others known intuitively. These rules pertain to a wide range of phenomena on various levels of organization. The chapter focuses on governing principles that act as essential mediators between the rules and the various types of experiences. Various phenomena may realize each principle on different levels of organizational rules through a variety of parameters, following a complex of psychoacoustic and cognitive constraints. The chapter presents eight principles and sub-principles that contribute to the experience of overall excitement. Most of them contribute to types of directionality and complexity, too. These principles are: intensification; sudden change; range of occurrence, related to the normative range; separation; contrast; uncertainty, focusing on non-concurrence; deviation from expectations; and rarity.