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Contemporary Music Review

Vol. 30, No. 2, April 2011, pp. 127141

Old Tricks New Media: Schillinger


Techniques are Relevant to All Kinds
of Contemporary Music Irrespective
of Style
Jeremy Arden

Music associated with the Concre`te tradition, dependent on synthesis and sampling, is
frequently rhythmically complex and highly unpredictable. The timbres associated with
this genre may be dense and, in terms of information theory, feature a very low rate of
redundancy. This article describes how Schillinger techniques can be used to structure the
medium- and large-scale form of electroacoustic music, determining the onset and
relative weighting of complex spectromophologically conceived sounds. The same
procedures are also highly useful in live electroacoustic performances and music that
involves improvisation. Against this background the author describes how Schillinger
techniques play a part in his own composition practice and feed into his electroacoustic
music, helping him to maintain a degree of control when composing with complex and
unusual sounds, noise-based timbres and intricate textures, the very things that test the
threshold of our mental capacities.
Keywords: Schillinger System; Composition; Electroacoustic; Temporal Ratio; Rhythmic
Structure; Tabla

Cognitive Capacity
The study of music as a manifestation of human biology (Schillinger, 1948) is an
approach that has rapidly developed since Schillinger died in 1943. However, his
ideas, whether or not scientifically misplaced, turn out to be advantageous because
the techniques offered in his system are based on natural patterns such as crystal
structures, symmetry and forms of growthin other words, they are based on the
everyday material world. This basic principle means that the products and

ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) 2011 Taylor & Francis


http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2011.636200

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the processes of the Schillinger system tend to remain within the boundaries set by the
listeners normal cognitive capacity. I use the term cognitive capacity here to describe
the whole process of listening to and understanding music. The general model of
cognition and perception suggests that we listen and respond to music through
instantaneous assessments of musical style, making rapid predictions as to the
probability of different modes of continuation. Meyer and others suggest that the
emotional response to music lies in our ability to predict the completion of a musical
tendency, or to comprehend the significance of a deviation, such as the interrupted
cadence (Meyer, 1994, p. 10). Drawing on information theory, which deals mathematically with the communication of information, it can be inferred that if music
exceeds the listeners cognitive thresholds, then there can be no experience based on an
assessment of probability; this may explain the very limited popularity of certain styles.
The Abstraction of Information
One especially pertinent example of science influencing music involves our
ubiquitous mobile communication technology, which relies on the mathematics of
information theory (Shannon, 1948), developed by Bell Laboratories in the 1940s.
Solving the problems of a poor phone line and the implications of the science behind
error correction in digital signals quickly attracted the interest of psychologists and
artists. It is important to stress here that the mathematics developed by Claude
Shannon is fundamentally different in kind to any abstraction that might be made in
another discipline, such as psychology or music. To transpose the methods and ideas
of different disciplines, such as music and mathematics, based on structural analogies,
is useful only as a heuristic method. It offers possible experiments rather than affirms
the value of their results (Moles, 1968). Nevertheless, the obvious potency of
information theory has inspired new models and ideas in disparate fields. For
example, in music psychology, generally accepted models of emotional response use
the language of probability and information when describing how we listen to and
respond to a musical stimulus (Huron, 2006, p. 53). Every moment of listening
arouses expectationsin other words, we hypothesise (unconsciously) about the
likely continuations and are duly surprised, delighted, irritated or confused when the
outcome is heard. The probabilities inherent in a musical style and our ability to
predict the completion of a musical statement are bound up with our shared cultural
knowledge and our ability to receive messages. Numerous simple examples abound,
such as the resolution of the dominant seventh chord, which tends to be treated in a
particular way in the eighteenth-century European style, or in jazz, styles that feature
rootless chords, in which the root tone is physically absent but perceptually present.
The phenomenon of unconscious inference, which was first described by Helmholz,
and developed into the field of Gestalt psychology (Meyer, 1956, p. 153), is perhaps
best known to musicians as the case of the missing fundamental. We hear a bass tone,
the fundamental of a series of harmonics, which is, in fact, physically absent. Our
auditory system recognises the pattern of the upper harmonics and manufactures the

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appropriate fundamental. Recently, the process of pattern recognition and error


correction has been likened to information theory (Meyer, 1994, p. 13). As an
analogy, it has some appealing features. For example, if a pattern is very predictable
(e.g. Muzak in a shop), we can usually perceive its form even when masked by noise,
but if the opposite is true (e.g. a new composition performed for the first time), we
must strain to detect every moment or risk losing the ability to engage in our normal
predictive mode of listening.
As the triumphs of mathematics continued to fuel all manner of innovations and
spin-offs that improved daily life, so they inevitably led to the emergence of the
scientist-composer.
In 1954 I denounced linear thought (polyphony) . . . I proposed a world of soundmasses, vast groups of sound events, clouds, and galaxies governed by new
characteristics such as density, degree of order, and rate of change, which required
definitions and realisations using probability theory. (Xenakis, 1970, pp. 219)

If musical experience provokes rapid cascades of hypothesis and expectation, based


on the probabilities associated with style, then it follows that music, which challenges
all the norms of the cultural mainstream, risks excluding potential listeners. This is
not just a question of waiting for an audience to learn to appreciate the features of a
new style, as L.B. Meyer observes:
In their zeal to pack music full of meaning some contemporary composers have
perhaps so overloaded the channel capacity of the audience that one meaning
obscures another in the ensuing overflow. (Meyer, 1994, p. 17)

In general, the poetics of late-twentieth-century electroacoustic music makes great


use of the language of science nuanced with allusions to the cosmic mystery of life
and contains the echo of the revolutionary quantum physics developed in the early
twentieth century. Since then, uncertainty has spoken to generations of artists, who,
in their different ways, are expressing the complexity of reality in their music.
Who sees atoms? And yet everyone knows that all material appearance depends on
their structure. (Stockhausen, 1963, cited in Emmerson, 2007, p. 50)
For artists like myself, reality is flow, growth, change and ultimately uncertainty.
(Wishart, 1994)

The consequences for music have, in general, been growing complexity or, by
contrast, its sharply drawn antithesis; a simplifying aesthetic. Without wishing to
express a judgement either in favour of or against these trends, it is worth considering
whether some developments in music go beyond the normal pushing of cultural
assumptions to a point that in fact overwhelms the cognitive capacity of the listener.
In the case of music that attempts to make use of mathematical processes to express
the complexity of life, probabilistic listening may be impossible. Music that aims at
sparseness, on the other hand, may avoid information overload but, by contrast, fail

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to provide enough stylistic depth and variation to prevent the listener from feeling
underwhelmed.
Semantic (Connotative) Composition
Schillinger had no knowledge of information theory, but was aware of the psychology
of anticipation and fulfilment (Schillinger, 1946, p. 1415), and in his chapter
Semantic Basis of Music (p. 1410), he seems to be pointing towards an appreciation
of a cognitive mode in which musical patterns are continuously assessed for probable
patterns and schema:
We shall define judgement as the self evaluating partial response of the entire
reactive group. Its function consists of associating current configurational
responses with past configurational responses, with which it has pattern
similarities. (Schillinger, 1946, p. 1412)

In retrospect, this sounds very much like a probabilistic process of musical listening,
one based on learning and cultural knowledge. Schillinger was never able to go
beyond his idea of associations and judgements, and the text at this point moves on to
try to quantify and systematise configurational response, with limited success.
The Psychology of Time
Schillingers exploration of the perception of time is more fruitful. He asserts that
psychological time and clock time are very different. In particular, psychological time
is influenced by a musical quality called temporal saturation (Schillinger, 1946,
p. 1352). Increasing saturation is equated to growing psychological dissonance.
Schillinger is not absolutely clear about the nature of temporal saturation, but at
various times it is defined technically in terms of the relative density of events per
unit of time, the relative frequency of attacks, relative contrasts of texturefor
instance, between harmonic and polyphonicand contrasts of timbre. Just as
harmony requires the flux of tension and release, so contrasts between phases of
saturation and rarefaction are essential to provide the listener with a satisfying
experience (Schillinger, 1946, pp. 13511352).
Attack Groups
One method of controlling temporal saturation is described in Schillingers Theory of
Instrumental Forms (Schillinger, 1946, pp. 2745, 8791057), a vast discussion spread
across the two volumes of his system. Attacks are featureless events, sound-onsets and
clicks, with no preset duration. In their simplest manifestation, attacks may be
grouped together within time periods, such as bars, and further coordinated with
other groups to form sequences. In Figure 1, attack groups are black dots contained
within bars of 4/4, shown below the opening bars of Mozarts Eine Kleine Nacht Musik.

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Attack groups can be used to control musical pace and help to generate a sense of
purposeful forward motion. Generally, as contrast in size between successive attack
groups increases, so does the effect of change and forward momentum. The final bars
of my composition Ira for Cello, Piano and Electronics, shown in Figure 2, are a
good example of how an increasing number of attacks in each successive bar help to
drive the music to its conclusion.
In practice there is a limit to the number of attacks that can be accommodated
within a normal setting; the tempo of the music, the ability of the performer and
the resolution of the human ear determine the threshold. In electroacoustic music the
situation is somewhat different because of the potential to control attacks over the
smallest time span, down to the individual grains of sound, if need be. In my own
music, attacks are seldom that brief and instead are used as fairly infrequent trigger
points for a sustained evolving timbre. The very foreground of the music may be
highly complex and impossible to notate, but the trigger points are easily represented
by normal musical notation, and can be followed on the score by the live performer.

Figure 1 A melodic phrase is reduced to attack groups (2), (2), (4), (1).

Figure 2 The density of attacks increases during the final bars of the composition.

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J. Arden

Instrumental Form
When attack groups are combined with a scheme of spatial positions (or places of
instrumentation), the result is an instrumental form (Schillinger, 1946, p. 27). Figure 3
illustrates a complete process of composing an instrumental form. It starts with two
instruments (voices) and three attack groups, and ends with an extended and
intricate rhythmic form, which might be considered a subject in its own right. The
intervening steps in Figure 3 follow in a cascade of attack patterns, each synchronised
pair generating the next level. It is only at the very end that the final pattern
acquires pitch.
The marrying of attacks and instrumental forms produces one of the most complex
systems of nomenclature in the Schillinger system. The eight-point list below is
intended to prepare the reader for Figure 3 by introducing terminology as it appears
in the process.
1.
2.
3.

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Pli (places of instrumentation) are defined and synchronised with Pla (places of
attack).
Pli:Pla equals PL (total number of places of attack).
An attack group pattern (aa) is defined as both a quantity of attacks and groups
(brackets).1 The number of groups is synchronised with PL, resulting in A (total
number of attacks).
A rhythm (at) is defined as both a sequence of duration and a quantity of
attacks.
The number of attacks in at is synchronised with A, producing A0 : the total
number of attacks in the composition.
T (the total duration of at) is synchronised with A0 to give the total duration of
the composition T 0 . The individual durations of at are mapped onto T 0 .
A music symbol is assigned to the unit of duration t.
Metre is imposed with T 0 . The number of bars in the sequence is termed NT.

All the rhythms and configurations used in the technique of instrumental forms are
subject to interferencein fact, the whole process moves forward through the
synchronisation of pairs of parameters, such as Pli and Pla, to generate longer and
more complex patterns. The idea of instrumental form goes to the heart of effective
orchestration and arrangement for all kinds of music. The techniques can be applied
very flexibly and need not be confined to the most obvious orchestral groups.
Complex rhythmic patterns, phrases of melody or textures can be treated as units to
be assigned to instruments or loudspeaker arrays, resulting in sophisticated and
coordinated musical organisms, rhythmically fluctuating in texture and density.
Schillinger takes attack theory to great lengths, but always with a traditional acoustic
context intended for arrangers and orchestrators. Various techniques are offered by
means of which attack groups can be fed through the instruments of an orchestraa
kind of rhythm of timbre. This idea is perfectly suited to the composition of

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Figure 3 Instrumental form produced by synchronisation of attack groups.

electroacoustic music and its virtually limitless resources of timbre and spatial
position. In the case of my own electroacoustic music, the final pitched outcome of
Figure 3 would have been irrelevant, and instead the rhythm alone would acquire a
repertoire of carefully crafted spectromorphological forms.

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Long-range Form and Temporal Ratio


Temporal saturation effects produced through the use of attack group techniques or
instrumental forms of timbre and spatial position are schemes that can define the
entire trajectory of a composition. Once the repertoire of subjects is chosen it is
possible to weight them using a temporal ratio and so control their presence over the
whole period of the composition. Figure 4 (top line) shows three subjects, A, B and C,
each with a different depth of shading representing a hypothetical degree of temporal
saturation. They are weighted according to the temporal ratio 1:3:4. Each subsequent
line shows a permutation of the original.
The forms shown in Figure 4 are all potentially useful variations that could be
rendered into expressive musical discourses. The choice of temporal ratio depends
on the composers imaginative vision of the music. Except where it is used as an
exercise in mimicry of a style or particular composition, the ratio is dependent on
too many factors for patterns and routines to be prescribed in advance. Schillinger
recommends selecting ratios from the fragments of growth patterns, but in the end
it is a matter of judgement and the ability to think ahead to the final outcome. For
me, the ratio 1:3:4 was attractive because it suggested effects of both contrast and
acceleration.
Once a thematic sequence has been chosen, further temporal patterns may be
generated for each phase of the sequence until the detailed foreground of the music is
rhythmically defined as in Figure 3. On the one hand this feels like a mechanistic
approach, wheels-within-wheels, but in practice it never interferes with free choice; I
maintain that structure is the friend of spontaneous instinctive composing.
Figure 5 shows the working out of a monothematic composition for piano
based on very simple temporal ingredients and the ratio 4:3:1. The process
defines the exact duration in both clock time and musical metric time of each
variant and continues to accumulate more rhythmic detail until the composition
is finished. The algebraic notation is quite opaque, so some explanation is
required.
T ! represents total duration.
T represents bars, in this case 4/4.
t represents the smallest subdivision of the metric beat, in this case a semiquaver.
Subject A is defined as follows:
T ! 8T
T 4/4
t 1/16
If crotchet 10 then T 40 and T ! 3200
Temporal ratio 4:3:1
Subject distributed as:
A1 4T

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A2 3T
A3 T
Duration of subjects in seconds:
A1 160
A2 120
A3 40
Number of t units per subject:
A1 64t
A2 48t
A3 16t
Rhythm of duration imposed on subjects:
A1 (3,1,1,3)2
A2 4(3,1,2,2,1,3)
A3 (3,2,3,3,2,3)
Final arrangement for piano:
(9,3,3,9,3,1,1,3,3,1,1,3,9,3,3,9)//4((3,1,2,2,1,3)//(3,2,3,3,2,3)
The composition shown in Figure 5 has only one subject (A) and so the degree of
temporal saturation is more or less constant. Subject A was invented freely but it was
influenced strongly by two rules: (1) rhythms should be symmetrical; and (2) rhythms
develop through the number 4 and its multiples. The first variant (3,1,1,3) is squared,2
the second variant (3,1,2,2,1,3) is scaled up by a factor of 4, and finally the third

Figure 4 A ratio and group of subjects are synchronised and then permutated to create a
family of long-range forms.

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variant (3,2,3,3,2,3) undergoes no further modification and appears as itself. All other
parameters, such as pitch, were important but secondary to rhythmic considerations.
In this case, the temporal ratio 4:3:1 helps to bind three variants of subject A into a
complete unit or phrase, a middle-ground gesture. The temporal ratio method just
described is one of a number of techniques for handling patterns of long duration,
background schemes, which influence more complex foreground events.
Long-range Temporal Control: distributive powers
By now it is probably clear to the reader that any of the approaches described here can
on their own be enough to initiate an entire composition, and that combining several
techniques simultaneously will almost certainly produce the kind of overwhelming
complication associated with the sensory overload described at the start of this article.
So how can the composer decide which technique to use? While trial and error is
ultimately the only way, one technique stands out as consistently satisfying. In the
matter of long-range temporal control, the technique of distributive powers offers
rigour and freedom, a potent combination. One of Schillingers great insights was to
recognise the musical significance of power series and to apply a simple quadratic

Figure 5 A monothematic composition based on the temporal ratio 4:3:1.

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equation to coordinate the relationship between foreground rhythms and rhythms


that extend over many measures (Schillinger, 1946, ch. 12). The technique allows
polyphonic rhythm scores of great clarity and sophistication to be created.
Distributive powers make it possible to develop a very short rhythmic motif over a
much greater duration by making use of the following quadratic equation:


A B2 A2 AxB BxA B2
Comparing the proportions of the original rhythm, the seed and the result after
application of the equation, it will be seen, in Figure 6, that temporal relationships that
characterise the original are maintained in the result. For example, let us say that in the
seed, duration A is characterised as long and B as short. After squaring, the proportions maintain the same relative pattern, long to short, but over a greater period
of time.
The products of the developed motif are not simplistic, as they might be if one
simply expanded duration by a single factor. Neither are they too distant and remote
from the surface of the music; essential aspects of the original proportions are
maintained in the expanded form.
At first, it may seem that this technique has little to do with the concerns of the
electroacoustic style. For example, the view that form emerges from timbre, the
spectromorphological approach, is pointedly not concerned with the world of time
units or bar lines. The attraction of escaping the tyranny of gross units of
measurement (bars and beats) and getting inside the microstructure of sound
remains a compelling journey for composers. Nevertheless, the perception of music is
still determined by our basic psychology and our perceptual capacities. The composer
may escape considerations of foreground and middle-ground time structures in a
theoretical or conceptual sense, but he or she is still at the mercy of the reality of the
perceptual experience, which is true by virtue of the way things in fact are, and not by
logical necessity.
In electroacoustic music, distributive power techniques are ideal for making
defined rhythms within which organic spectromorphological microstructures can
unfold. The composer may exert control over long periods of time with maximum
artistic license to intuitively model foreground events. I have adapted Schillingers
techniques to my electroacoustic composition in order to weave rhythmic patterns

Figure 6 The elements of the seed A B maintain their proportions after squaring.

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through different architectonic levels of the music. In this way I hope to shape my
noised-based music, with its information-rich and sometimes chaotic sound world,
while still partaking of its potential to express raw wildness or breathtaking realism.
Figure 7 is an excerpt from my Nocturne for clarinet and electronics. The top line of
the score and the numbers above are simply a visual aid so the reader may see how
such a pattern helps to coordinate the onset of a variety of electronic sounds notated
graphically on the second and third lines from the top. A modified form of the
pattern controls the clarinet melody shown on the bottom stave.
The rhythm derived from (3, 1, 2)2, and its permutations, are used to coordinate
the clarinet and its accompaniment. I find the rhythms produced by power series are
very effective for determining the background temporal structure of my music. They
are like the substructure of a building, a skeleton on which the surface layers can be
hung. In my electroacoustic compositions, these rhythms determine the onset of
events without inhibiting the development of complex and noise-based sounds. I
have found it helpful to think of the points of attack that are generated by the
procedure as defining the boundaries of what might be called windows of opportunity.
Inside these windows all kinds of developments can occur. However, what in fact
does happen is always interconnected by virtue of the distributive powers technique. I
have written elsewhere about the practice of working in this way, and find the
challenge and the constraints highly creative (Arden, 2006).
Universal Application of Power Series
The musical applications of long-range temporal patterns go beyond the composition
phase and have practical possibilities in the realm of improvisation. Musicians can
agree in advance on a pattern of precise hit-points, moments of togetherness or
change, and still be relatively free in between times. This practice is in fact well
established in the performance of Indian classical music, which is at the same time
both highly prescriptive and compatible with improvisation. Power series are

Figure 7 A rhythm is used to determine the onset of a complex electroacoustic phrase.

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established in the North Indian Tabla tradition and are the means by which a number
of instrumentalists coordinate spectacular displays of rhythmic virtuosity. The
synchronisation of two or more performers after an extended period in which their
parts have apparently developed a high degree of rhythmic independence is one of the
exquisite features of the Indian classical tradition.
One well-known procedure uses the interference of two rhythmic patterns. An
accompanist plays Tin Tal, a metric cycle of sixteen beats (a square rhythm) while the
soloist plays Uthan, a composition of twenty-seven beats. Here we have the first
intimation of a power series based on the number three, as the cube of three equals
twenty-seven. Uthan is repeated three times, eighty-one beats in all, which is, of
course, the square of nine. Simultaneously, the accompanist performs five cycles of
Tin Tal, eighty beats in all, making the difference between the two cycles performed
by the two players a matter of 1/81. As the extra beat of Uthan coincides with the first
beat of Tin Tal the patterns collide with spectacular precision and the audience

Figure 8 Two rhythms (Uthan and Tin Tal) contained within an 81-beat structure.

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cheers. In practice, the musicians carefully disguise the moment of synchronisation


until the soloist has completed an elaborate improvisation, which might extend over
many cycles of Uthan. Given the length and complexity of this form, it is astonishing
that the performers can keep track of their relative positions in the composition, but
musicians of average ability regularly accomplish such feats, and although I have no
direct evidence, I am assured that the most skilful players are able to make complex
calculations about the duration of the interfering cycles as they perform. Figure 8 uses
western notation and a quadruple metre to illustrate the relationship between Tin Tal
and the Uthan. The patterns are shown without any of the improvisation and
ornamentation that would elaborate a real performance. The different pitch positions
on the five-line staff indicate the various sounds that are produced by each drum. The
words written above the staff, known as bols, also denote timbre, and are the means
by which Indian musicians orally communicate rhythmic patterns. The asterisks
above the staff indicate the end of each twenty-seven-beat cycle, and the final short
bar indicates the moment of synchronisation between the two patterns.
It is especially exciting to find Schillingers most potent idea confirmed by common
practice in a living musical tradition, which has no connection to or knowledge of his
work; this is, I think, further evidence that his techniques can underpin any style or form.
Conclusions
Schillingers intuitive understanding of the musical experience enabled him to invent an
approach that attempted to address listeners perception of musical time, and his
techniques remain versatile and useful: thinking rhythmically about relative density and
texture is natural to the composition of electroacoustic music. Attack groups and
temporal ratios can act as shaping devices and regulators of pace over middle-ground
and longer duration. The technique of distributive powers is of primary importance
because it ensures a perceptible connection between the smallest temporal units of the
music and larger middle-ground periods. As we have seen, this is a powerful relationship
and is embedded at the heart of two very different musical traditions. In the field of
artistic creation, the relevance and effectiveness of any system depend considerably on
the judgement exercised by the individual artist in the act of creation. For this reason,
the composer should approach Schillingers work from the point of view of the creative
artist imposing stylistic language and subjective judgement on any particular technical
routine. To predict too closely a response in an audience is to invite error because so
much depends on the myriad cultural experiences of the listener. Nevertheless, for the
composer, observing the analogies between music, probability and information may
avoid the danger of oppressing the listener with music of low redundancy or boring
them with its opposite.
Notes
[1] It is important to remember that attacks and durations have various manifestations. For
example, at different points in Schillingers text the rhythm of duration at represents a

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quantity of attacks (step 4), or the total duration T (step 6), or, finally, a rhythmic sequence
mapped onto A0 (steps seven and eight).
[2] Squaring: see Long-range Temporal Control section in this article.

References
Arden. J. (2006). Keys to the Schillinger System, course A: Basic principles and foundations. Harwich
Port, MA: Rose Books.
Emmerson. S. (2007). Living electronic music. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Huron, D. (2006). Sweet anticipation, music and the psychology of perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, L. B. (1994). Music, the arts, and ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moles, A. (1968). Information theory and esthetic perception. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Schillinger, J. (1946). The Schillinger system of musical composition. New York: C. Fischer.
Schillinger, J. (1948). Mathematical Basis of the Arts. New York: Philosophical Library.
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical
Journal, 27 (July), 379423; (October), 623656.
Wishart, T. (1994). Audible design: A plain and easy introduction to sound composition. York:
Orpheus the Pantomime.
Xenakis, I. (1970). Towards a metamusic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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