The Cognitive Differences Between European Tonal Music And Chinese National Music Hierarchy

Like language,music structure is hierarchical.Musical hierarchy refers to the difference in the perceptual stability of musical events(notes or chords),which results in different levels: the more stable the perception is,the more important it is considered.In theory,the stability of European tonal music scale can be divided into four levels: the main tone is perceived as the most stable level,followed by the third and fifth levels,followed by other levels in the mode,and the most unstable is the external tone level.The hierarchy of tonal music is also reflected in the chord: the main chord is perceived as the most stable,followed by the subordinate and subordinate chords,followed by the chords composed of other natural tone levels in the tone,and the most unstable is the chord composed of the external tone levels.Since the main chord is the most stable,the music always ends on the main chord,thus forming a sense of ending.Music of different nationalities has different scale systems,and the hierarchy of its structure is also different.With the increasingly frequent exchanges of music and culture,can listeners of other nationalities perceive the hierarchical structure of music just as listeners of their own nationalities? This study explores Chinese and European college students’ perception of the hierarchical structure of Chinese national music and European tonal music from the two dimensions of scale and sentence structure.The inherent logic is that the construction of the hierarchical structure of musical sentences is based on the perceptual stability level of the scale.Two experiments were conducted in this study.Both Chinese and European students were selected as subjects.The first experiment used the classical sounding paradigm to explore the two groups of College Students’ sense of Chinese national music and European tonal music.The results show that both European and Chinese college students’ perception of Chinese national music and European tonal music reflects the level of scale stability.The results show that both groups of college students can process the hierarchical structure of Chinese and European music.In order to further verify the two groups’ cognition of the hierarchical structure of musical sentences,the second experiment used Event-related brain potentials(ERPs)technology to investigate the two groups’ cognition of the hierarchical structure of Chinese national music and European tonal music sentences.The experiment used European tonal music and Chinese national music as experimental stimuli,includingtwo experimental conditions: syntactic rules and syntactic violations.The results show that there is no difference between Chinese college students’ judgment of the syntactic rules of European tonal music and Chinese national music,while European college students’ judgment of Chinese national music is inferior to that of European tonal music.ERP results showed that both Chinese and European college students induced an early right anterior negative wave(ERAN)in the processing of syntactic irregularities in European tonal music,suggesting that both groups could process the syntactic rules of European tonal music melody.However,the ERAN effect is induced only by the processing of syntactic irregularities in Chinese national music by Chinese College students,while the processing of syntactic irregularities in Chinese national music by European college students does not induce ERAN,which indicates that European college students do not have the implicit knowledge of the structure of Chinese national music sentences.The results of this study show that Chinese college students can process the musical hierarchy and sentence hierarchy of the two kinds of music,which proves that Chinese college students have the ears of dual music culture.This may be due to their acquisition of the syntactic rules of Chinese national music and European tonal music in long-term unconscious listening to music;although European college students can base on them.In the frequency of musical scale appearance,they perceive the stability of Chinese national music scale,but they cannot produce nervous response to the syntactic rules of Chinese national music,indicating that they do not have the "mode ear" of Chinese music in essence.The results of this study will provide theoretical basis for cross-cultural music understanding and music learning.