Katherine Napiwotzki
MUS 2122H
30 October 2012
Knowledge regarding children’s ability to perceive changes
in Western harmony is continuously developing. It is still becoming clear exactly how and
when a child begins to demonstrate harmonic knowledge. In Jourdain’s book, Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy published in 1997, an approximate
timeline is given for the development of harmonic perception in children. Jourdain states that, prior to age five, a
child has little sense of harmonic relations.
Children become sensitive to key membership (the notes belonging to a
particular key) at age 5, but lack any sense of consonance and dissonance
relative to other keys (Jourdain, 112).
Therefore, they do not yet process harmonic chords and chord
progressions. Recently, a study by Trainor
and Corrigall (2010) has found that children as early as 4 years old display
some knowledge of Western harmony, and it is possible that an ability to
perceive Western harmony could begin to develop even earlier.
Researchers
seem to agree that harmonic perception is one of the latest musical skills to fully develop (Jourdain, 257; Corrigall,
195). This is because it is
significantly more difficult to detect harmony than it is to detect pitch,
rhythm, amplitude, metre, or phrasing.
Increasing ability to perceive harmony involves both the ability to
predict how chords might appear in sequence and the hierarchy of stability
(Corrigall, 195) of particular chords within a key. For example, the ability to differentiate between
tonic and dominant chords is necessary to detect a cadence at the end of a
piece. It is believed that a general
ability can be and is developed throughout childhood “through mere exposure to
Western music (Corrigall, 195)”. A study
by Trehub, Cohen, Thorpe, and Morrongiello (1986) found that infants could
detect a change in both tonal and atonal melodies while 4 and 5 year olds could
only detect a change in tonal melodies (Corrigall, 195). This would seem to suggest that already at
the age of four and five, children are beginning to develop implicit knowledge
of Western harmony. This is due to the
fact that, as we passively experience music in our daily lives, “incoming sound
is [still] extensively processed in the brain stem (Jourdain, 245)”. Our brain constantly processes sound often on
a rather unconscious level. When we are actively
listening to a piece of music, whether classical or popular, our brain searches
for familiar devices and patterns we have previously experienced in order to
anticipate the next note or harmony in a piece of music (Jourdain, 246). This knowledge develops as we get older so
that “adults with no musical training have extensive implicit knowledge of
Western harmony (Schellenberg, 553).”
In
1994, Trainor andTrehub tested children ages five and seven as well as adults
on their ability to detect a change in a 10-note melody presented repeatedly in
transposition (Schellenberg, 553). This
study was intended to test the various age groups’ sensitivity to implied
harmony since different notes within a melody imply specific harmonies
(Corrigall, 196). Therefore, the test
included two different types of stimuli, changed notes not part of the implied
harmony and changed notes part of the implied harmony. The
test discovered that adults were faster to detect a note change in the melody
if the note was not part of the
implied harmony. Seven year olds responded
similarly to the adults. This seems to
suggest knowledge of implied harmony for seven year olds, however five year
olds did not respond. These findings are
in line with Jourdain’s statement that,
[although] young children can detect key
changes, they lack all sense of near and far keys – that is, of relative
consonance and dissonance. This
understanding does not set in until seven or eight (Jourdain, 112).
However, if tests are
simplified, it becomes apparent that children younger than seven are influenced
by harmonic changes. For example,
Schellenberg, Bigand, Poulin-Charronnat, Garnier, and Stevens (2005) discovered
that six year olds respond faster in identifying timbre in the last chord of a
harmonic progression when the progression follows Western harmonic rules by
ending on the tonic chord. This does not
demonstrate a verbal understanding of what tonic
means, but it does prove that six year olds have already developed a preference
for the tonic chord simply by being exposed to Western music.
Furthermore,
Costa-Giomi (1994) proved that five year olds are able perceive changes between
tonic and first inversion dominant seventh chords as well as tonic and subtonic
chords in an unfamiliar piece of music.
The test presented both four year olds and five year olds with four
different stimuli: En la torre (containing
I & V) presented with just the accompanying chords or the melody with the
accompanying chords and Drunken Sailor
(containing i & VII) presented with accompanying chords or the melody with
accompanying chords. The results showed
that neither five nor four year olds were able to discriminate between chords
when the melody and harmonies were played at the same time, but five year olds
could perceive harmonic changes when just the chords were played apart from the
melody (Costa-Giomi, 77).
So far,
an increase in harmonic perception for five year olds has been shown. Corrigall and Trainor (2010) take this a step
further in their discovery that even four year olds are sensitive to harmony in
a familiar piece, Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star. Children used hand-
held happy and sad face signs to show whether a puppet played the excerpt
correctly or incorrectly. The children
were tested on three deviants: out-of-key, in key out-of-harmony, and in-key
and within harmony. For example, in playing
the melody, out-of-harmony deviants ended the piece on C# and within harmony
deviants ended on F#. Similarily, when
the melody was accompanied by chords, out-of-key deviants ended on a d minor
chord and out-of-harmony deviants ended on a G major chord. The results showed that both four year olds
and five year olds detected out-of harmony deviants. The difference in development was that while
five year olds could detect out-of-harmony deviants when only the chordal
accompaniment of Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star was presented, four year olds needed both the melody and chords to
detect out-of harmony deviants.
These
results correspond with Trainor and Trehub’s 1994 study stating that both
adults and seven-year olds are faster to detect out-of-harmony deviants than
in-harmony deviants. Through Corrigall
and Trainor’s study, it is possible to observe that five year olds also have
the ability to detect out-of-harmony deviants when the piece is familiar. In addition, four year olds have the ability
to detect out-of-harmony deviants when presented with both the melody and the
chords to a familiar piece. It is
interesting to compare this to Costa-Giomi’s 1994 trial of the same age group
where the students were presented three 15 minute harmony training sessions and
still did not perform well during the test.
This would seem to suggest that harmonic perception in four and five
year olds largely depends on the familiarity of the music. In conclusion, Corrigall and Trainor’s study
proves that children do have some level of harmonic perception earlier than what
has previously been considered, and tests could be developed to detect smaller
amounts of harmonic perception at an earlier age.
Bibliography
Corrigall,
Kathleen A. and Laurel J. Trainor. "Musical Enculturation in Preschool
Children: Acquisition of Key and
Harmonic Knowledge." Music Perception 28, no. 2 (2010): 195-200. http://search.proquest.com/docview/858125331?accountid=14771.
Costa-Giomi, Eugenia. “Recognition of Chord Changes by 4-
and 5-Year-Old American and Argentine Children.” Journal of Research in Music
Education 42, no. 1 (Spring, 1994): 68-85. http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/3345338
Jourdain, Robert. Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy.
New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997.
Schellenberg,
Glenn E., Bigand, Emmanuel, Poulin-Charronnat, Benedicte, Garnier, Cécilia and
Catherine Stevens. “Children's
implicit knowledge of harmony in Western music.” Developmental science 8,
no.6 (2005): 551-566. http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/tmp/6035240536070998679.pdf
