Learning to Listen, Listening to Learn: Music Perception and the Psychology of Enculturation

What accounts for the variety of music witnessed across the world? The answer lies in the psychological mechanisms of cultural evolution that combine a creative process of composing ever new forms of music and a perceptual process of learning to appreciate listening to them.

This book develops and tests a theory of the psychological mechanisms that enable listeners to learn the structure of their culturally-situated musical environments so as to be able to perceive and appreciate music. The...