Music, Mind, and Meaning

Author(s): Marvin Minsky

Source: Computer Music Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 28-44
Published by: MIT Press
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Marvin
Minsky and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Music, Mind,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Meaning

WhyDoWeLikeMusic? haps the myth persists because emotions (by their

nature) draw attention, while the processes of rea-
Why do we like music? Our culture immerses us in son (much more intricate and delicate) must be pri-
it for hours each day, and everyone knows how it vate and work best alone.
touches our emotions, but few think of how music The old distinctions among emotion, reason, and
touches other kinds of thought. It is astonishing aesthetics are like the earth, air, and fire of an an-
how little curiosity we have about so pervasive an cient alchemy. We will need much better concepts
"environ-mental"influence. What might we dis- than these for a working psychic chemistry.
cover if we were to study musical thinking? Much of what we now know of the mind emerged
Have we the tools for such work? Yearsago, in this century from other subjects once considered
when science still feared meaning, the new field of just as personal and inaccessible but which were
research called artificial intelligence (AI)started to explored, for example, by Freudin his work on
supply new ideas about "representationof knowl- adults' dreams and jokes, and by Piaget in his work
edge" that I'll use here. Are such ideas too alien for on children's thought and play. Why did such work
anything so subjective and irrational, aesthetic, and have to wait for modern times? Before that, chil-
emotional as music? Not at all. I think the prob- dren seemed too childish and humor much too hu-
lems are the same and those distinctions wrongly morous for science to take them seriously.
drawn: only the surface of reason is rational. I don't Why do we like music? We all are reluctant, with
mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that regardto music and art, to examine our sources of
understanding reason is probablyharder.Our cul- pleasure or strength. In part we fear success itself-
ture has a universal myth in which we see emotion we fear that understanding might spoil enjoyment.
as more complex and obscure than intellect. In- Rightly so: art often loses power when its psycho-
deed, emotion might be "deeper" in some sense of logical roots are exposed. No matter; when this
prior evolution, but this need not make it harder to happens we will go on, as always, to seek more
understand; fact,in I think today we actually know robust illusions!
much more about emotion than about reason. I feel that music theory has gotten stuck by try-
Certainly we know a bit about the obvious pro- ing too long to find universals. Of course, we would
cesses of reason-the ways we organize and repre- like to study Mozart's music the way scientists
sent ideas we get. But whence come those ideas analyze the spectrum of a distant star. Indeed, we
that so conveniently fill these envelopes of order?A find some almost universal practices in every musi-
poverty of language shows how little this concerns cal era. But we must view these with suspicion, for
us: we "get"ideas; they "come" to us; we are "re- they might show no more than what composers
minded of" them. I think this shows that ideas then felt should be universal. If so, the search for
come from processes obscured from us and with truth in art becomes a travesty in which each era's
which our surface thoughts are almost uninvolved. practice only parodies its predecessor'sprejudice.
Instead, we are entranced with our emotions, which (Imagine formulating "laws"for television screen-
are so easily observed in others and ourselves. Per- plays, taking them for natural phenomenon unin-
fluenced by custom or constraint of commerce.)
The trouble with the search for universal laws
This is a revised and updatedversion of A.I. Memo No. 616. The of
earlier version will also appearin Music, Mind, and Brain: The thought is that both memory and thinking inter-
act and grow together. We do not just learn about
Neuropsychology of Music edited by ManfredClynes, and pub-
lished by Plenum, New York. things, we learn ways to think about things; then
C 1981 by Marvin Minsky we learn to think about thinking itself. Before long,

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our ways of thinking become so complicated that presents the elements carefully, not introducing too
we cannot expect to understand their details in many new ideas or developing them too far, for un-
terms of their surface operation, but we might un- til the basics are learned the pupils cannot build on
derstand the principles that guide their growth. In them. So, at first, the teacher repeats a lot. Sonatas,
much of this article I will speculate about how lis- too, explain first one idea, then another, and then
tening to music engages the previously acquired recapitulate it all. (Music has many forms and there
personal knowledge of the listener. are many ways to teach. I do not say that compos-
It has become taboo for music theorists to ask ers consciously intend to teach at all, yet they are
why we like what we like: our seekers have forgot- masters at inventing forms for exposition, including
ten what they are searching for. To be sure, we those that swarm with more ideas and work our
can't account for tastes, in general, because people minds much harder.)
have various preferences. But this means only that Thus expositions show the basic stuff-the
we have to find the causes of this diversity of atoms of impending chemistries and how some
tastes, and this in turn means we must see that simple compounds can be made from those atoms.
music theory is not only about music, but about Then, in developments, those now-familiar com-
how people process it. To understand any art, we pounds, made from bits and threads of beat and
must look below its surface into the psychological tone, can clash or merge, contrast or join together.
details of its creation and absorption. We find things that do not fit into familiar frame-
If explaining minds seems harderthan explaining works hard to understand-such things seem
songs, we should remember that sometimes enlarg- meaningless. I prefer to turn that around:a thing
ing problems makes them simpler! The theory of has meaning only after we have learned some ways
the roots of equations seemed hard for centuries to represent and process what it means, or to under-
within its little world of real numbers, but it sud- stand its parts and how they are put together.
denly seemed simple once Gauss exposed the larger What is the difference between merely knowing
world of (so-called) complex numbers. Similarly, (or remembering, or memorizing) and understand-
music should make more sense once seen through ing? We all agree that to understand something we
listeners' minds. must know what it means, and that is about as far
as we ever get. I think I know why that happens. A
thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have
Sonataas TeachingMachine several different ways to represent it-different per-
spectives and different associations. Then we can
Music makes things in our minds, but afterward turn it around in our minds, so to speak: however it
most of them fade away. What remains? In one old seems at the moment, we can see it another way
story about Mozart, the wonder child hears a and we never come to a full stop. In other words,
lengthy contrapuntal mass and then writes down we can think about it. If there were only one way to
the entire score. (I do not believe such tales, for his- represent this thing or idea, we would not call this
tory documents so few of them that they seem to representation thinking.
be mere legend, though by that argument Mozart So something has a "meaning"only when it has a
also would seem to be legend.) Most people do not few; if we understood something just one way, we
even remember the themes of an evening's concert. would not understand it at all. That is why the
Yet, when the tunes are played again, they are rec- seekers of the "real"meanings never find them.
ognized. Something must remain in the mind to This holds true especially for words like under-
cause this, and perhaps what we learn is not the stand. That is why sonatas start simply, as do the
music itself but a way of hearing it. best of talks and texts. The basics are repeated sev-
Compare a sonata to a teacher. The teacher gets eral times before anything larger or more complex
the pupils' attention, either dramatically or by the is presented. No one remembers word for word all
quiet trick of speaking softly. Next, the teacher that is said in a lecture or all notes that are played

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Fig. 1. Introductory mea-
sures of Ludwig van
Beethoven's Symphony
No. 5 in C Minor.

Allegro conbrio(J ioes)

Flutes -

Oboes
-..
A2

Clarinetsin Bb -
--_-_
a2

Bassoons _ =
,ph._,
.

Hornsin Eb

inC
Trumpets

Timpaniin C, G

Allegro con brio(~ ios)

ViolinI

ViolinII

Viola_ _ _ _

Cello b6M

in a piece. Yet if we have understood the lecture or prefigures the second half-call it B? It is simple:
piece once, we now "own" new networks of knowl- an agent A that recognizes A sends a message to
edge about each theme and how it changes and re- another agent B, built to recognize B. That message
lates to others. No one could remember all of Bee- serves to "lower B's threshold" so that after A hears
thoven's Fifth Symphony from a single hearing, but A, B will react to smaller hints of B than it would
neither could one ever again hear those first four otherwise. As a result, that mind "expects"to hear
notes as just four notes! Once a tiny scrap of sound, B after A; that is, it will discern B, given fewer or
these four notes have become a known thing-a more subtle cues, and might "complain"if it can-
locus in the web of all the other things we know not. Yet that mind cannot reproduceeither theme
and whose meanings and significances depend on in any generative sense. The point is that interagent
one another (Fig. 1). messages need not be in surface music languages,
Learning to recognize is not the same as memo- but can be in codes that influence certain other
rizing. A mind might build an agent that can sense agents to behave in different ways.
a certain stimulus, yet build no agent that can re- (AndorKovach pointed out to me that composers
produce it. How could such a mind learn that the do not dare use this simple, four-note motive any
first half-subject of Beethoven's Fifth-call it A- more. So memorable was Beethoven's treatment

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 p .re...___ __ _ _

p cresc. /

p
crerc.
-

CT-p
ese.

p cresc.
-resc.c- e N" N

_ _J JJ
- .

p- p c .rew.-
c,'e ..

p p ce .

*r
_--_

-# J - -JJJ ... . . . .
__

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 I!o ,W ------- -- •- ~ f - .-- -- o
4h-
Vj
Sif Itf

ff ff if -f _ __

^ ~ ~sf ~4~Ijf f amf "t 1rd

' lll

if i
f.,
P1

. . .
F J
F~~~n•U"~~ I .,
ij

if f

L _

s if if

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 that now an accidental hint of it can wreck another to place each metric frame precisely on the after-
piece by unintentionally distracting the listener.) image of the one before.
If sonatas are lessons, what are the subjects of
those lessons? The answer is in the question! One Cadence. Silence. Almost. Total.
thing the Fifth Symphony taught us is how to hear
those first four notes. The surface form is just de- Now it is the second subject-twin's turn to stand
scending major third, first tone repeated thrice. At alone in time. The conductor must select a symme-
first, that pattern can be heard two different ways: try: he or she can choose to answer prior cadence,
(1) fifth and third in minor mode or (2) third and to start anew, or to close the brackets opened at the
first, in major. But once we have heard the sym- very start. (Can the conductor do all at once and
phony, the latter is unthinkable-a strange con- maintain the metric frame?)We hear a long, long
straint to plant in all our heads! Let us see how it unison F (subdominant?)for, underneath that silent
is taught. surface sound, we hear our minds rehearsingwhat
The Fifth declares at once its subject, then its was heard.
near-identical twin. First comes the theme. Pre- The next frame reveals the theme again, descend-
sented in a stark orchestral unison, its minor mode ing now by thirds. (We see that it was the dominant
location in tonality is not yet made explicit, nor is ninth, not subdominant at all. The music fooled us
its metric frame yet clear: the subject stands alone that time, but never will again.) Then tour de force:
in time. Next comes its twin. The score itself the subject climbs, sounding on every scale degree.
leaves room to view this transposed counterpart This new perspective shows us how to see the four-
as a complement or as a new beginning. Until note theme as an appogiatura.Then, as it descends
now, fermatas have hidden the basic metric frame, on each tonic chord-note, we are made to see it as a
a pair of twinned four-measure halves. So far we fragment of arpeggio. That last descent completes a
have only learned to hear those halves as separate set of all four possibilities, harmonic and direc-
wholes. tional. (Is this deliberate didactic thoroughness, or
The next four-measure metric half-frame shows merely the accidental outcome of the other sym-
three versions of the subject, one on each ascending metries?) Finally, the theme's melodic range is
pitch of the tonic triad. (Now we are sure the key is squeezed to nothing, yet it survives and even gains
minor.) This shows us how the subject can be made strength as single tone. It has always seemed to me
to overlap itself, the three short notes packed per- a mystery of art, the impact of those moments in
fectly inside the long tone's time-space. The second quartets when texture turns to single line and forte-
half-frame does the same, with copies of the com- piano shames sforzando in perceived intensity. But
plement ascending the dominant seventh chord. such acts, which on the surface only cause the
This fits the halves together in that single, most structure or intensity to disappear,must make the
familiar, frame of harmony. In rhythm, too, the largest difference underneath. Shortly,I will pro-
halves are so precisely congruent that there is no pose a scheme in which a sudden, searching change
room to wonder how to match them-and attach awakes a lot of mental difference-finders.This very
them-into one eight-measure unit. change wakes yet more difference-finders,and this
The next eight-measure frame explains some awakening wakes still more. That is how sudden
more melodic points: how to smooth the figure's silence makes the whole mind come alive.
firmness with passing tones and how to counter- We are "told" all this in just one minute of the
poise the subject's own inversion inside the long lesson and I have touched but one dimension of
note. (I think that this evokes a sort of sinusoidal its rhetoric. Besides explaining, teachers beg and
motion-frame idea that is later used to represent threaten, calm and scare; use gesture, timbre,
the second subject.) It also illustrates compression quaver, and sometimes even silence. This is vital in
of harmonic time; seen earlier, this would obscure music, too. Indeed, in the Fifth, it is the start of the
the larger rhythmic unit, but now we know enough subject! Such "lessons" must teach us as much

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about triads and triplets as mathematicians have the bad thoughts. Perhapsthe music that some call
learned about angles and sides! Think how much background music can tranquilize by turning un-
we can learn about minor second intervals from der-thoughts from bad to neutral, leaving the sur-
Beethoven's Grosse Fuge in E-flat, Opus 133. face thoughts free of affect by diverting the uncon-
scious. The structures we assemble in that detached
kind of listening might be wholly solipsistic webs
What Use Is Music?
of meaninglike cross-references that nowhere touch
Why on earth should anyone want to learn such "reality."In such a self-constructed world, we
things? Geometry is practical-for building pyra- would need no truth or falsehood, good or evil, pain
mids, for instance-but of what use is musical or joy. Music, in this unpleasant view, would serve
knowledge? Here is one idea. Each child spends as a fine escape from tiresome thoughts.
endless days in curious ways; we call this play.
A child stacks and packs all kinds of blocks and
boxes, lines them up, and knocks them down. What SyntacticTheoriesof Music
is that all about? Clearly, the child is learning about
space! But how on earth does one learn about time? Contrast two answers to the question, Why do we
Can one time fit inside another? Can two of them like certain tunes?
go side by side? In music, we find out! It is often Because they have certain structural features.
said that mathematicians are unusually involved
in music, but that musicians are not involved in Because they resemble other tunes we like.
mathematics. Perhapsboth mathematicians and The first answer has to do with the laws and
musicians like to make simple things more compli- rules that make tunes pleasant. In language, we
cated, but mathematics may be too constrained to know some laws for sentences; that is, we know
satisfy that want entirely, while music can be rig- the forms sentences must have to be syntactically
orous or free. The way the mathematics game is acceptable, if not the things they must have to
played, most variations lie outside the rules, while make them sensible or even pleasant to the ear. As
music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a ca- to melody, it seems, we only know some features
sual accompaniment. So mathematicians might that can help-we know of no absolutely essen-
need music, but musicians might not need mathe- tial features. I do not expect much more to come
matics. A simpler theory is that since music en- of a search for a compact set of rules for musi-
gages us at earlier ages, some mathematicians are cal phrases. (The point is not so much what we
those missing mathematical musicians. mean by rule, as how large a body of knowledge is
Most adults have some childlike fascination for involved.)
making and arranginglarger structures out of The second answer has to do with significance
smaller ones. One kind of musical understanding outside the tune itself, in the same way that asking,
involves building large mental structures out of Which sentences are meaningful? takes us outside
smaller, musical parts. Perhapsthe drive to build shared linguistic practice and forces us to look
those mental music structures is the same one that upon each person's private tangled webs of thought.
makes us try to understand the world. (Orperhaps Those private webs feed upon themselves, as in all
that drive is just an accidental mutant variant of it; spheres involving preference: we tend to like things
evolution often copies needless extra stuff, and that remind us of the other things we like. For ex-
minds so new as ours must contain a lot of that.) ample, some of us like music that resembles the
Sometimes, though, we use music as a trick to songs, carols, rhymes, and hymns we liked in child-
misdirect our understanding of the world. When hood. All this begs this question: If we like new
thoughts are painful we have no way to make them tunes that are similar to those we already like,
stop. We can attempt to turn our minds to other where does our liking for music start? I will come
matters, but doing this (some claim) just submerges back to this later.

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 The term resemble begs a question also: What such things might mean or represent, we have to
are the rules of musical resemblance? I am sure speak of how they are made.
that this depends a lot on how melodies are "repre- We cannot describe how the mind is made with-
sented" in each individual mind. In each single out having good ways to describe complicated pro-
mind, some different "mind parts" do this different cesses. Before computers, no languages were good
ways: the same tune seems (at different times) to for that. Piaget tried algebraand Freudtried dia-
change its rhythm, mode, or harmony. Beyond that, grams; other psychologists used Markov chains and
individuals differ even more. Some listeners squirm matrices, but none came to much. Behaviorists,
to symmetries and shapes that others scarcely hear quite properly,had ceased to speak at all. Linguists
at all and some fine fugue subjects seem banal to flocked to formal syntax, and made progressfor a
those who sense only a single line. My guess is that time but reached a limit: transformationalgrammar
our contrapuntal sensors harmonize each fading shows the contents of the registers (so to speak),
memory with others that might yet be played; per- but has no way to describe what controls them.
haps Bach's mind could do this several ways at This makes it hard to say how surface speech re-
once. Even one such process might suffice to help lates to underlying designation and intent-a baby-
an improviser plan what to try to play next. (To try and-bath-watersituation. The reason I like ideas
is sufficient since improvisers, like stage magicians, from AI research is that there we tend to seek pro-
know enough "vamps"or "ways out" to keep the cedural description first, which seems more appro-
music going when bold experiments fail.) priate for mental matters.
How is it possible to improvise or comprehend a I do not see why so many theorists find this ap-
complex contrapuntal piece? Simple statistical ex- proach disturbing. It is true that the new power de-
planations cannot begin to describe such processes. rived from this approachhas a price: we can say
Much better are the generative and transforma- more, with computational description, but prove
tional (e.g., neo-Schenkerian) methods of syntactic less. Yet less is lost than many think, for mathe-
analysis, but only for the simplest analytic uses. At matics never could prove much about such com-
best, the very aim of syntax-oriented music theo- plicated things. Theorems often tell us complex
ries is misdirected because they aspire to describe truths about the simple things, but only rarely tell
the sentences that minds produce without attempt- us simple truths about the complex ones. To be-
ing to describe how the sentences are produced. lieve otherwise is wishful thinking or "mathemat-
Meaning is much more than sentence structure. We ics envy." Many musical problems that resist for-
cannot expect to be able to describe the anatomy of mal solutions may turn out to be tractable anyway,
the mind unless we understand its embryology. in future simulations that grow artificial musical
And so (as with most any other very complicated semantic networks, perhaps by "raising"simulated
matter), science must start with surface systems of infants in traditional musical cultures. It will be ex-
description. But this surface taxonomy, however citing when one of these infants first shows a hint
elegant and comprehensive in itself, must yield of real "talent."
in the end to a deeper, causal explanation. To un-
derstand how memory and process merge in "lis-
tening," we will have to learn to use much more Space and Tune
"procedural"descriptions, such as programsthat
describe how processes proceed. When we enter a room, we seem to see it all at
In science, we always first explain things in once; we are not permitted this illusion when lis-
terms of what can be observed (earth, water, fire, tening to a symphony. "Of course," one might de-
air). Yet things that come from complicated pro- clare, for hearing has to thread a serial path through
cesses do not necessarily show their natures on the time, while sight embraces a space all at once. Ac-
surface. (The steady pressure of a gas conceals those tually, it takes time to see new scenes, though we
countless, abrupt microimpacts.) To speak of what are not usually aware of this. That totally compel-

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 ling sense that we are conscious of seeing every- mind regardsitself. When speaking of illusion, we
thing in the room instantly and immediately is assume that someone is being fooled. "I know
certainly the strangest of our "optical"illusions. those lines are straight,"I say, "but they look bent
Music, too, immerses us in seemingly stable to me." Who are the different I's and me's? We are
worlds! How can this be, when there is so little of it all convinced that somewhere in each person struts
present at each moment? I will try to explain this a single, central self; atomic, indivisible. (And se-
by (1) arguing that hearing music is like viewing cretly we hope that it is also indestructible.)
scenery and (2) by asserting that when we hear good I believe, instead, that inside each mind work
music our minds react in very much the same way many different agents. (The idea of societies of
they do when we see things.' And make no mis- agents [Minsky 1977; 1980a; 1980b] originated in
take: I meant to say "good"music! This little the- my work with Seymour Papert.)All we really need
ory is not meant to work for any senseless bag of to know about agents is this: each agent knows
musical tricks, but only for those certain kinds of what happens to some others, but little of what
music that, in their cultural times and places, com- happens to the rest. It means little to say, "Eloise
mand attention and approval. was unaware of X" unless we say more about which
To see the problem in a slightly different way, of her mind-agents were uninvolved with X. Think-
consider cinema. Contrasta novice's clumsy patched ing consists of making mind-agents work together;
and pasted reels of film with those that transportus the very core of fruitful thought is breakingprob-
to other worlds so artfully composed that our own lems into different kinds of parts and then assign-
worlds seem shoddy and malformed. What "hides ing the parts to the agents that handle them best.
the seams" to make great films so much less than (Among our most important agents are those that
the sum of their parts-so that we do not see them manage these assignments, for they are the agents
as mere sequences of scenes? What makes us feel that embody what each person knows about what
that we are there and part of it when we are in fact he or she knows. Without these agents we would be
immobile in our chairs, helpless to deflect an atom helpless, for we would not know what our knowing
of the projected pattern's predetermined destiny? I is for.)
will follow this idea a little further, then try to ex- In that division of labor we call seeing, I will sup-
plain why good music is both more and less than pose that a certain mind-agent called feature-finder
sequences of notes. sends messages (about features it finds on the ret-
Our eyes are always flashing sudden flicks of dif- ina) to another agent, scene-analyzer. Scene-
ferent pictures to our brains, yet none of that sac- analyzer draws conclusions from the messages it
cadic action leads to any sense of change or motion gets and sends its own, in turn, to other mind-
in the world; each thing reposes calmly in its parts. For instance, feature-finderfinds and tells
"place"!What makes those objects stay so still about some scraps of edge and texture; then scene-
while images jump and jerk so? What makes us analyzer finds and tells that these might fit some
such innate Copernicans? I will first propose how bit of shape.
this illusion works in vision, then in music. Perhaps those features come from glimpses of a
We will find the answer deep within the way the certain real table leg. But knowing such a thing is
1. EdwardFredkinsuggested to me the theory that listening to not for agents at this level; scene-analyzer does not
music might exercise some innate map-makingmechanism in know of any such specific things. All it can do is
the brain. When I mentioned the puzzle of music's repetitious- broadcast something about shape to hosts of other
ness, he comparedit to the way rodents explore new places: first agents who specialize in recognizing special things.
they go one way a little, then back to home. They do it again a (Since special things-like tables, words, or dogs-
few times, then go a little farther.They try small digressions,
but frequently return to base. Both people and mice explore new must be involved with memory and learning, there
territories that way, making mental maps lest they get lost. Mu- is at least one such agent for every kind of thing
sic might portraythis building process, or even exercise those this mind has learned to recognize.) Thus, we can
very parts of the mind. hope, this message reaches table-maker, an agent

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specialized to recognize evidence that a table is in ing our eyes or raising our heads provide no cause
the field of view. After many such stages, descen- to exorcise that floor inside our current spatial
dants of such messages finally reach space-builder, model of the room. My paper on frame-systems
an agent that tries to tell of real things in real (Minsky 1974) says more about these concepts.
space. Here we only need these few details.
Now we can see one reason why perception Now, back to our illusions. While feature-finder
seems so effortless: while messages from scene- is not instantaneous, it is very, very fast and a
analyzer to table-maker are based on evidence that highly parallel pattern matcher. Whatever scene-
feature-finder supplied, the messages themselves analyzer asks, feature-finderanswers in an eye
need not say what feature-finderitself did, or how it flick, a mere tenth of a second (or less if we have
did it. Partly this is because it would take scene- image buffers).More speed comes from the way in
analyzer too long to explain all that. In any case, which space-builder can often tell itself, via its own
the recipients could make no use of all that infor- high-speed model memory, about what has been
mation since they are not engineers or psychol- seen before. I argue that all this speed is another
ogists, but just little specialized nerve nets. root of our illusion: if answers seem to come as
Only in the past few centuries have painters soon as questions are asked, they will seem to
learned enough technique and trickery to simulate have been there all along.
reality. (Once so informed, they often now choose The illusion is enhanced in yet another way by
different goals.) Thus space-builder, like an ordi- "expectation" or "default."Those agents know good
nary person, knows nothing of how vision works, ways to lie and bluff! Aroused by only partial evi-
perspective, foveae, or blind spots. We only learn dence that a table is in view, table-maker supplies
such things in school: millennia of introspection space-builder with fictitious details about some
never led to their suspicion, nor did meditation, "typical table" while its servants find out more
transcendental or mundane. The mind holds tightly about the real one! Once so informed, space-builder
to its secrets not from stinginess or shame, but can quickly move and plan ahead, taking some
simply because it does not know them. risks but ready to make corrections later. This only
Messages, in this scheme, go various ways. Each works, of course, when prototypes are good and are
motion of the eye or head or body makes feature- rightly activated-that is what intelligence is all
finder start anew, and such motions are responses about.
(by muscle-moving agents) to messages that scene- As for "awareness"of how all such things are
analyzer sends when it needs more details to re- done, there simply is not room for that. Space-
solve ambiguities. Scene-analyzer itself responds to builder is too remote and different to understand
messages from "higher up." For instance, space- how feature-finder does its work of eye fixation.
builder may have asked, "Is that a table?" of table- Each part of the mind is unaware of almost all that
maker, which replies (to itself), "Perhaps,but it happens in the others. (That is why we need psy-
should have another leg-there," so it asks scene- chologists; we think we know what happens in our
analyzer to verify this, and scene-analyzer gets the minds because those agents are so facile with "de-
job done by making eye-mover look down and to faults," but we are almost always wrong.) True,
the left. Nor is scene-understander autonomous: each agent needs to know which of its servants can
its questions to scene-analyzer are responses to re- do what, but as to how, that information has no
quests from others. There need be no first cause in place or use inside those tiny minds inside our
such a network. minds.
When we look up, we are never afraidthat the How do both music and vision build things
ground has disappeared, though it certainly has in our minds? Eye motions show us real objects;
"dis-appeared." This is because space-builder re- phrases show us musical objects. We "learn" a
members all the answers to its questions and never room with bodily motions; large musical sections
changes any of those answers without reason; mov- show us musical "places." Walks and climbs move

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us from room to room; so do transitions between teach new things, or tear down prior arts. For some
musical sections. Looking back in vision is like re- such purposes composers must use the known
capitulation in music; both give us time, at certain forms and frames or else expect misunderstanding.
points, to reconfirm or change our conceptions of Of course, when expectations are confirmed too
the whole. often the style may seem dull; this is our concern
Hearing a theme is like seeing a thing in a room, in the next section. Yet, just as in language, one
a section or movement is like a room, and a whole often best explains a new idea by using older ones,
sonata is like an entire building. I do not mean to avoiding jargon or too much lexical innovation. If
say that music builds the sorts of things that space- readers cannot understand the words themselves,
builder does. (That is too naive a comparison of the sentences may "be Greek to them."
sound and place.) I do mean to say that composers This is not a matter of a simple hierarchy,in
stimulate coherency by engaging the same sorts of which each meaning stands on lower-level ones, for
interagent coordinations that vision uses to produce example, word, phrase, sentence, paragraph,and
its illusion of a stable world using, of course, dif- chapter. Things never really work that way, and jab-
ferent agents. I think the same is true of talk or berwocky shows how sense comes through though
writing, the way these very paragraphsmake sense- many words are new. In every era some contempo-
or sense of sense-if any. rary music changes basic elements yet exploits es-
tablished largerforms, but innovations that violate
too drastically the expectations of the culture can-
Composingand Conducting not meet certain kinds of goals. Of course this will
not apply to works whose goals include confusion
In seeing, we can move our eyes; lookers can and revolt, or when composers try to create things
choose where they shall look, and when. In music that hide or expurgate their own intentionality,
we must listen here; that is, to the part being but in these instances it may be hard to hold the
played now. It is simply no use asking music-finder audience.
to look there because it is not then, now. Each musical artist must forecast and predirect
If composer and conductor choose what part we the listener's fixations to draw attention here and
hear, does not this ruin our analogy? When music- distract it from there-to force the hearer (again,
analyzer asks its questions, how can music-finder like a magician) to ask only the questions that the
answer them unless, miraculously, the music hap- composition is about to answer. Only by establish-
pens to be playing what music-finder wants at just ing such preestablished harmony can music make
that very instant? If so, then how can music paint it seem that something is there.
its scenes unless composers know exactly what the
listeners will ask at every moment? How to en-
sure-when music-analyzer wants it now-that Rhythmand Redundancy
precisely that "something" will be playing now?
That is the secret of music; of writing it, playing, A popular song has 100 measures, 1000 beats. What
and conducting! Music need not, of course, confirm must the martians imagine we mean by those mea-
each listener's every expectation; each plot de- sures and beats, measures and beats! The words
mands some novelty. Whatever the intent, control themselves reveal an awesome repetitiousness.
is required or novelty will turn to nonsense. If al- Why isn't music boring?
lowed to think too much themselves, the listeners Is hearing so like seeing that we need a hundred
will find unanswered questions in any score; about glances to build each musical image? Some repeti-
accidents of form and figure, voice and line, tem- tive musical textures might serve to remind us of
perament and difference-tone. things that persist through time like wind and
Composers can have different goals: to calm and stream. But many sounds occur only once: we must
soothe, surprise and shock, tell tales, stage scenes, hear a pin drop now or seek and search for it; that is

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why we have no "ear-lids."Poetry drops pins, or Measure-takers notice certain patterns of time-
says each thing once or not at all. So does some events like 3/4, 4/4, 6/8.
music. Difference-finders observe that the figure
Then why do we tolerate music's relentless here is same as that one there, except a per-
rhythmic pulse or other repetitive architectural fea- fect fifth above.
tures? There is no one answer, for we hear in dif- Structure-builders perceive that three
ferent ways, on different scales. Some of those ways phrases form an almost regular
portray the spans of time directly, but others speak "sequence."
of musical things, in worlds where time folds over
on itself. And there, I think, is where we use those The idea of interconnecting feature-finders, dif-
beats and measures. Music's metric frames are tran- ference-finders, and structure-builders is well
sient templates used for momentary matching. Its exemplified in Winston's work (1975). Measure-
rhythms are "synchronization pulses" used to takers would be kinds of frames, as described in "A
match new phrases against old, the better to con- Frameworkfor Representing Knowledge"(Minsky
trast them with differences and change. As dif- 1974). First, the feature-finderssearch the sound
ferences and change are sensed, the rhythmic frames stream for the simplest sorts of musical signifi-
fade from our awareness. Their work is done and cance: entrances and envelopes, the tones them-
the messages of higher-level agents never speak of selves, the other little, local things. Then measure-
them; that is why metric music is not boring! takers look for metric patterns in those small
Good music germinates from tiny seeds. How events and put them into groups, thus finding beats
cautiously we handle novelty, sandwiching the new and postulating rhythmic regularities. Then the dif-
between repeated sections of familiar stuff! The ference-finders can begin to sense events of musical
clearest kind of change is near-identity,in thought importance; imitations and inversions, syncopa-
just as in vision. Slight shifts in view may best re- tions and suspensions. Once these are found, the
veal an object's form or even show us whether it is structure-builderscan start work on a larger scale.
there at all. The entire four-level agency is just one layer of a
When we discussed sonatas, we saw how match- larger system in which analogous structures are re-
ing different metric frames helps us to sense the peated on larger scales. At each scale, another level
musical ingredients. Once frames are matched, we of order (with its own sorts of things and differ-
can see how altering a single note at one point will ences) makes larger-scale descriptions, and thus
change a major third melodic skip at another point consumes another order of structural form. As a
to smooth passing tones; or will make what was result, notes become figures, figures turn into
there a seventh chord into a dominant ninth. phrases, and phrases turn into sequences; and notes
Matching lets our minds see different things, from become chords, and chords make up progressions,
different times, together. This fusion of those and so on and on. Relations at each level turn to
matching lines of tone from different measures things at the next level above and are thus more
(like television's separate lines and frames) lets us easily remembered and compared. This "time-
make those magic musical pictures in our minds. warps" things together, changing tone into tonality,
How do our musical agents do this kind of work note into composition.
for us? We must have organized them into struc- The more regular the rhythm, the easier the
tures that are good at finding differences between matching goes, and the fewer difference agents are
frames. Here is a simplified four-level scheme that excited further on. Thus once it is used for "lining
might work. Many such ideas are current in re- up," the metric structure fades from our attention
search on vision (Winston 1975). because it is represented as fixed and constant (like
the floor of the room you are in) until some metric
Feature-finders listen for simple time-events, like alteration makes the measure-takers change their
notes, or peaks, or pulses. minds. Sic semper all Alberti basses, um-pah-pahs,

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and ostinati; they all become imperceptible except theories could hold truth, and others too, for
when changing. Rhythm has many other functions, nothing need have a single cause inside the mind.
to be sure, and agents for those other functions see Theories about children need not apply to adults
things different ways. Agents used for dancing do because (I suspect) human minds do so much self-
attend to rhythm, while other forms of music de- revising that things can get detached from their ori-
mand less steady pulses. gins. We might end up liking both Art of Fugue and
We all experience a phenomenon we might call Musical Offering, mainly because each work's sub-
persistence of rhythm, in which our minds main- ject illuminates the other, which gives each work a
tain the beat through episodes of ambiguity. I pre- richer network of "significance."Dependent cir-
sume that this emerges from a basic feature of how cularity need be no paradoxhere, for in thinking
agents are usually assembled; at every level, many (unlike logic) two things can support each other in
agents of each kind compete (Minsky 1980b). Thus midair. To be sure, such autonomy is precarious;
agents for 3/4, 4/4, and 6/8 compete to find best once detached from origins, might one not drift
fits. Once in power, however, each agent "cross-in- strangely awry? Indeed so, and many people seem
hibits" its competitors. Once 3/4 takes charge of quite mad to one another.
things, 6/8 will find it hard to "get a hearing"even In his book Sentics (1978), Manfred Clynes, a
if the evidence on its side becomes slightly better. physiologist and pianist, describes certain specific
When none of the agents has any solid evidence temporal sensory patterns and claims that each is
long enough, agents change at random or take associated with a certain common emotional state.
turns. Thus anything gets interesting, in a way, if it For example, in his experiments, two particularpat-
is monotonous enough! We all know how, when a terns (that gently rise and fall) are said to suggest
word or phrase is repeated often enough it, or we, states of love and reverence; two others (more
begin to change as restless searchers start to am- abrupt)signify anger and hate. He claims that these
plify minutiae and interpret noise as structure. and other patterns-he calls them sentic-arouse
This happens at all levels because when things are the same effects through different senses-that is,
regular at one level, the difference agents at the embodied as acoustical intensity, or pitch, or tactile
next will fail, to be replaced by other, fresh ones pressure, or even visual motion-and that this is
that then re-present the sameness different ways. cross-cultural. The time lengths of these sentic
(Thus meditation, undirected from the higher men- shapes, on the order of 1 sec, could correspondto
tal realms, fares well with the most banal of re- parts of musical phrases.
petitious inputs from below.) Clynes studied the "muscular"details of instru-
Regularities are hidden while expressive nuances mental performances with this in view, and con-
are sensed and emphasized and passed along. cluded that music can engage emotions through
Rubato or crescendo, ornament or passing tone, the these sentic signals. Of course, more experiments
alterations at each level become the objects for the are needed to verify that such signals really have
next. The mystery is solved; the brain is so good at the reported effects. Nevertheless, I would expect to
sensing differences that it forgets the things them- find something of the sort for quite a different rea-
selves; that is, whenever they are the same. As for son: namely, to serve in the early social develop-
liking music, that depends on what remains. ment of children. Sentic signals (if they exist)
would be quite useful in helping infants to learn
about themselves and others.
SenticSignificance All learning theories require brains to somehow
impose "values" implicit or explicit in the choice of
Why do we like any tunes in the first place? Do we what to learn to do. Most such theories say that
simply associate some tunes with pleasant experi- certain special signals, called reinforcers, are in-
ences? Should we look back to the tones and pat- volved in this. For certain goals it should suffice to
terns of mother's voice or heartbeat? Or could it be use some simple, "primary" physiological stimuli
that some themes are innately likable? All these like eating, drinking, relief of physical discomfort.

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Human infants must learn social signals, too. The children's musical cultures, some lessons about
early learning theorists in this century assumed successions of our own affective states. Sentically
that certain social sounds (for instance, of approval) encrypted, those ballads could encode instructions
could become reinforcers by association with in- about conciliation and affection, aggression and re-
nate reinforcers, but evidence for this was never treat; precisely the knowledge of signals and states
found. If parents could exploit some innate sentic that we need to get along with others. In later life,
cues, that mystery might be explained. more complex music might illustrate more intri-
This might also touch another, deeper problem: cate kinds of compromise and conflict, ways to fit
that of how an infant forms an image of its own goals together to achieve more than one thing at a
mind. Self-images are important for at least two time. Finally, for grown-ups, our Burgesses and
reasons. First, external reinforcement can only be a Kubricks fit Beethoven's Ninths to Clockwork
part of human learning; the growing infant must Oranges.
eventually learn to learn from within to free itself If you find all this farfetched, so do I. But before
from its parents. With Freud,I think that children rejecting it entirely, recall the question, Why do we
must replace and augment the outside teacher with have music, and let it occupy our lives with no ap-
a self-constructed, inner, parent image. Second, we parent reason? When no idea seems right, the right
need a self-model simply to make realistic plans for one must seem wrong.
solving ordinary problems. For example, we must
know enough about our own dispositions to be
able to assess which plans are feasible. Pure self- Themeand Thing
commitment does not work; we simply cannot
carry out a plan that we will find too boring to What is the subject of Beethoven's Fifth Sym-
complete or too vulnerable to other, competing in- phony? Is it just those first four notes? Does it in-
terests. We need models of our own behavior. How clude the twin, transposed companion too? What of
could a baby be smart enough to build such a the other variations, augmentations, and inver-
model? sions? Do they all stem from a single prototype?In
Innate sentic detectors could help by teaching this case, yes.
children about their own affective states. Forif dis- Or do they? For later in the symphony the theme
tinct signals arouse specific states, the child can as- appears in triplet form to serve as countersubject of
sociate those signals with those states. Just know- the scherzo: three notes and one, three notes and
ing that such states exist, that is, having symbols one, three notes and one, still they make four (Fig.
for them, is half the battle. If those signals are uni- 2). Melody turns into monotone rhythm; meter is
form enough, then from social discourse one can converted to two equal beats. Downbeat now falls
learn some rules about the behavior caused by on an actual note, instead of a silence. With all of
those states. Thus a child might learn that concilia- those changes, the themes are quite different and
tory signals can change anger to affection. Given yet the same. Neither the form in the allegro nor
that sort of information, a simple learning machine the scherzo alone is the prototype; separate and
should be able to construct a "finite-state person- equal, they span musical time.
model." This model would be crude at first, but to Is there some more abstract idea that they both
get started would be half of the job. Once the baby embody? This is like the problem raised by Witt-
had a crude model of some other, it could be copied genstein (1953) of what words like game mean. In
and adapted in work on the baby's self-model. (This my paper on frames (Minsky 1974), I argue that for
is more normative and constructional than it is vision, chair can be described by no single pro-
descriptive, as Freudhinted, for the self-model totype; it is better to use several prototypes con-
dictates more than portrays what it purports to nected in relational networks of similarities and
portray.) differences. I doubt that even these would represent
With regardto music, it seems possible that we musical ideas well; there are better tools in con-
conceal, in the innocent songs and settings of our temporary AI research, such as constraint systems,

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Fig. 2. Introductory mea-
sures of the third move-
ment of Beethoven's
Symphony No. 5 in C
Minor.

Allegro (. = 96) poco ritard.a tempo

Flutes _PW_

Oboes
Bb
Clarinetsin

Bassoons
a2
Hornsin
EbI,CI
TrumpetsinC

Timpaniin C, G
Allegro (J.- 96) poco ritard.a tempo
Violin I v

Violin II UP-

Viola

Cello _ _

Bas
SPPPP 7p
poco ritard.
S13_ A. a tempo

AM .
.

- -s
.. -------

po ritard. a tempo

PP) • • •
A'lPP PP_

l •
" 'i t ,i • :• "" , " i "S-a
" , " f "

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conceptual dependency, frame-systems, and seman- ing approving sounds. The child has just been walk-
tic networks. Those are the tools we use today to ing there, and holding this just so, and thinking
deal with such problems. (See Computer Music that, and speaking in some certain way. How can
Journal4[2] and 4[3], 1980.) the mind of the child find out which behavior is
What is a good theme? Without that bad word good? The trouble is, each aspect of the child's be-
good, I do not think the question is well formed havior must result from little plans the child made
because anything is a theme if everything is music! before. We cannot reward an act. We can only re-
So let us split that question into (1) What mental ward the agency that selected that strategy,the
conditions or processes do pleasant tunes evoke? agent who wisely activated the first agent, and so
and (2) What do we mean by pleasant? Both ques- on. Alas for the generation of behaviorists who
tions are hard, but the first is only hard; to answer wastes its mental life by missing this plain and
it will take much thought and experimentation, simple principle.
which is good. The second question is very dif- To reward all those agents and processes, we
ferent. Philosophers and scientists have struggled must propagate some message that they all can use
mightily to understand what pain and pleasure are. to credit what they did; the plans they made, their
I especially like Dennett's (1978) explanation of strategies and computations. These various recip-
why that has been so difficult. He argues that pain ients have so little in common that such a message
"works"in different ways at different times, and all of approval, to work at all, must be extremely sim-
those ways have too little in common for the usual ple. Words like good are almost content-free mes-
definition. I agree, but if pain is no single thing, sages that enable tutors, inside or outside a society,
why do we talk and think as though it were and to tell the members that one or more of them has
represent it with such spurious clarity? This is no satisfied some need, and that tutor need not under-
accident: illusions of this sort have special uses. stand which members did what, or how, or even
They play a role connected with a problem facing why.
any society (inside or outside the mind) that learns Words like satisfy and need have many shifting
from its experience. The problem is how to assign meanings. Why, then, do we seem to understand
the credit and blame, for each accomplishment or them? Because they evoke that same illusion of
failure of the society as a whole, among the myriad substantiality that fools us into thinking it tau-
agents involved in everything that happens. To the tologous to ask, Why do we like pleasure? This
extent that the agents' actions are decided locally, serves a need: the levels of social discourse at
so also must these decisions to credit or blame be which we use such clumsy words as like, or good,
made locally. or that was fun must coarsely crush together many
How, for example, can a mother tell that her different meanings or we will never understand oth-
child has a need (or that one has been satisfied) be- ers (or ourselves) at all. Hence that precious, essen-
fore she has learned specific signs for each such tial poverty of word and sign that makes them so
need? That could be arrangedif, by evolution, sig- hard to define. Thus the word good is no symbol
nals were combined from many different internal that simply means or designates, as table does. In-
processes concerned with needs and were provided stead, it only names this protean injunction: Acti-
with a single, common, output-an infant's sentic vate all those (unknown) processes that correlate
signal of discomfort (or contentment). Such a genet- and sift and sort, in learning, to see what changes
ically preestablished harmony would evoke a corre- (in myself) should now be made. The word like is
sponding central state in the parent. We would feel just like good, except it is a name we use when we
this as something like the distress we feel when send such structure-building signals to ourselves.
babies cry. Most of the "uses" of music mentioned in this
A signal for satisfaction is also needed. Suppose, article-learning about time, fitting things to-
among the many things a child does, there is one gether, getting along with others, and suppressing
that mother likes, which she demonstrates by mak- one's troubles-are very "functional," but overlook

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much larger scales of "use." Curt Roads remarked Acknowledgments
that, "Everyworld above bare survival is self-
constructed; whole cultures are built around com- I am indebted to conversations and/or improvisa-
mon things people come to appreciate."These ap- tions with Maryann Amacher, JohnAmuedo, Betty
preciations, represented by aesthetic agents, play Dexter, Harlan Ellison, EdwardFredkin,Bernard
roles in more and more of our decisions: what we Greenberg, Danny Hillis, Douglas Hofstadter,
think is beautiful gets linked to what we think is William Kornfeld, Andor Kovach, David Levitt, Tod
important. Perhaps, Roads suggests, when groups of Machover, Charlotte Minsky, Curt Roads, Gloria
mind-agents cannot agree, they tend to cede deci- Rudisch, FredericRzewski, and Stephen Smoliar.
sions to those others more concerned with what, This article is in memory of Irving Fine.
for better or for worse, we call aesthetic form and
fitness. By having small effects at many little
points, those cumulative preferences for taste and References
form can shape a world.
That is another reason why we say we like the Clynes, M. 1978. Sentics. New York:Doubleday.
music we like. Liking is the way certain mind-parts Dennett, D. 1978. "Why a Machine Can't Feel Pain." In
make the others learn the things they need to un- Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psy-
derstand that music. Hence liking (and its relatives) chology. Montgomery, Vermont: Bradford Books.
is at the very heart of understanding what we hear. Minsky, M. 1974. "A Framework for Representing Knowl-
Affect and aesthetic do not lie in other academic edge." AI Memo 306. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Condensed
worlds that music theories safely can ignore. Those
version in P. Winston, ed. 1975. The Psychology of
other worlds are academic self-deceptions that we
Computer Vision. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 211-
use to make each theorist's problem seem like 277.
someone else's.2 Minsky, M. 1977. "Plain Talk About Neurodevelopmen-
tal Epistemology."In Proceedings of the Fifth Interna-
2. Many readersof a draftof this article complained about its tional Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
narrow view of music. What about jazz, "modern"forms, songs
with real words, monophonic chant and raga,gong and block, Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Artificial Intel-
and all those other kinds of sounds? Severalreadersclaimed to ligence Laboratory. Condensed in P. Winston and
be less intellectual, to simply hear and feel and not build build- R. Brown, eds. 1979. Artificial Intelligence. Cam-
ings in their minds. There simply is not space here to discuss all bridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 421-450.
those things, but: Minsky, M. 1980a. "Jokesand the Logic of the Cognitive
Unconscious." AI Memo 603. Cambridge, Massachu-
1. What makes those thinkers who think that music does
setts: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
not make them do so much construction so sure that
they know their minds so surely? It is ingenuous to think Minsky, M. 1980b. "K-lines: A Theory of Memory." Cog-
nitive Science 4(2): 117-133.
you "just react"to anything a culture works a thousand
years to develop. A mind that thinks it works so simply Roads, C. ed. 1980. Computer Music Journal 4(2) and
must have more in its unconscious than it has in its 4(3).
philosophy. Winston, P. H. 1975. "Learning Structural Descriptions
2. Our work here is with hearing music, not with hearing by Examples." In P. Winston, ed. 1975. Psychology
"music"!Anything that we can all agreeis music will be of Computer Vision. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp.
fine-that is why I chose Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. 157-209.
For what is music? All things played on all instruments?
Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Ox-
Fiddlesticks. All structures made of sound?That has a
ford: Oxford University Press.
hollow ring. The things I said of words like theme hold
true for words like music too: it does not follow that be-
cause a word is public the ways it works on minds is also
public. Before one embarks on a quest after the grail that
holds the essence of all "music,"one must see that there
is as significant a problem in the meaning of that single
sound itself.

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