ABSTRACT
Imperceptible aspects of musical structure may, then, be important to the musician: consequently what would be untenable as a psychological theory of perception may yet be useful as music theory. Theorists of music generally ascribe great significance to such large-scale tonal closure. For what the analytical reductions of Heinrich Schenker, Leonard B. Meyer, and F. Lerdahl and R. Jackendoff clearly show is that composers such as Bach and Beethoven shaped both the large-scale and the small-scale structure of their music according to the same principles. In other words, they gave their compositions a large-scale tonal structure that was analogous to the tonal structure of a single musical phrase. B. S. Rosner and L. B. Meyer found marked differences in the degree to which various aspects of melodic structure, as defined in music-theoretical terms, were reflected in listeners’ responses.
