A Hierarchical Theory of Aesthetic Perception: Musical Scales

The creation and perception of a work of art implies the construction of a hierarchy of scales, from the large to the small and detailed. The author develops a general hierarchical approach and makes use of the concepts of information theory and quantum mechanics to build a mathematical model of aesthetic perception that allows him to find all the possible musical scales. Each scale is represented by a collection of zones such that a variation of a sound inside a zone does not change its function. When a stimulus does not belong to any of the zones, the impression of dissonance occurs. It is shown how the “structuredness”—their formant nature—is connected to the hierarchy of pitch relations in music.