ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ways of understanding the familiarity that listeners gain from multiple hearings of a single recording of a piece of music. It begins by considering research in music and psychology concerning schemata as a means of understanding and representing knowledge. The chapter outlines some empirical work undertaken as part of a large-scale study of the effects of repeated music listening. It presents representations of schemata as a means of understanding some of the details contained within a listener's perceptual responses to a piece, outlining what may be learned from this information. Schemata are highly versatile and flexible mental frameworks for representing knowledge that may be related hierarchically, associatively or in a time-dependent order. They are used by musicologists and music psychologists to aid the understanding of music perception. According to Deliege and Melen, the perception of a piece of music involves segmentation according to Gestalt rules.
