Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation
Description
A richly detailed theory of how and why the audience has particular expectations and emotions…. A fascinating journey into the inner workings of music and how it tickles the human mind.— Petr Janata, Nature
Sweet Anticipation… in its range, rigour and insights constitutes an astonishing achievement. Although it announces itself as a book about expectation in music, it goes well beyond what that might imply and is more like a broad and encompassing theory of music perception and cognition, with expectation as the central concept.— Prof. Eric Clarke, Music Analysis
Review
Sweet Anticipation is an approachable book on many aspects of music cognition research and results suitable to anyone interested in how our my minds interact with music.
Huron begins Sweet Anticipation with a thorough literature review and explanation of research methods in the topic of music cognition, specifically with how researchers test hypotheses about expectation and emotion. From there, he delves into explaining the process of expectation: how humans constantly create mental predictions and how these predictions change and create emotions like surprise, happiness, joy, fear, etc. in music listeners.
The entire book is organized well for readers new to the topic and functions well as a resource to return to. Huron’s style of writing is approachable and conversational, one of the most approachable writers in the music theory and cognition fields. Finally, the content is unmatched. Sweet Anticipation greatly influenced the fields of both music theory and music cognition.
I rate Sweet Anticipation 5 out of 5 stars for its approachability, organization, and content. It’s perfect for anyone interested in expectation and emotion in music.