Donald A. Hodges, editor: Handbook of Music Psychology, 2nd Edition (review)

As its title suggests, this book is an overview of the large number of subjects contained within the field of music psychology. Charles T. Eagle, Jr., in his introductory chapter, defines music psychology very broadly as an investigation of music as a "form of human behavior." Since this includes such a wide variety of topics, the focus of the book is on breadth of information rather than on depth. Its goal is to serve as a general reference and as a pedagogical tool, not to make an original contribution to the field. The book is a collection of chapters, each by a different author, that together form an introduction to the field of music psychology. With only one exception, all of the contributors—including the editor, Donald A. Hodges—are professors at American universities.

In general, the individual chapters present an overview of a particular aspect of music psychology—such as psychoacoustics, music cognition, or neuromusicological research—followed by an extensive list of references. The latter is one of the most valuable features of the book, providing pointers to more detailed treatments of the chapters' topics. These reference lists can be quite extensive, some more than twenty pages long. The chapters are presented very clearly and are generally well-organized and thorough. Even topics with which one may not be familiar (such as, in my case, neuromusicological research) may be grasped with relative ease. The authors normally define technical terms at their first appearance and for the most part avoid excessive use of jargon.

Although the orientation of the book is mainly pedagogical, it is not organized as a textbook. The chapters do not proceed in a logical succession, with one expanding on concepts introduced in previous chapters. Instead, each is a self-contained unit and they may be read in any order. That being said, for those who are less familiar with the field, it is probably best to begin with Mr. Eagle's "An Introductory Perspective on Music Psychology." As previously mentioned, the author defines music psychology in its most general sense as being concerned with human musical behavior in all its facets. He gives a very brief overview of the history of the field, including lists of standard works of reference, textbooks, and periodicals, and also suggests possible directions for future research. After this chapter, the reader might then wish to progress to those dealing specifically with the fundamentals of hearing, a topic which is crucial for a fuller understanding of the other chapters of the book; it is an unavoidable fact that music is first and foremost a heard phenomenon. These chapters include "Basic Physical and Psycho-acoustical Processes," by Wanda B. Lathom-Radocy and Rudolf E. Radocy, and "Hearing and Music Perception" by Scott D. Lipscomb and the editor of the collection, Mr. Hodges.

An accompanying CD-ROM elaborates upon these last two chapters with interactive multimedia examples of many of the concepts discussed in the text, including, for instance, demonstrations of critical bandwidth, masking, and diagrams of the physiology of the ear. It also contains a stand-alone program that allows the user to experiment with sliders that control the amplitude of the partials of a harmonic spectrum, and to see and hear the resulting waveform. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then multimedia must be worth a thousand pictures. I have used these examples to great effect in my own teaching of acoustics to students in a course on digital studio composition at McGill University. Although the interface is occasionally awkward and the graphics are somewhat unsophisticated (let's be honest, they look like they were put together by the yearbook committee!), the disc is brimming with information that is presented quite clearly. The book itself is valuable, and, in combination with the disc, it becomes an even more useful reference and...