David Huron & Joy Ollen
Center for Cognitive Science
Ohio State University, June 11, 2004
Music scholars have long conjectured that the language of a culture influences the music of that culture. Unfortunately, pertinent observations have been anecdotal and few empirical studies have been carried out. This talk describes recent research comparing French and English music with known aspects of French and English prosody. A statistical study of nearly 2,000 musical themes by French and English composers shows a significant similarity between the rhythmic organization of the music and the "rhythmic" prosody of French compared with English. The results replicate a recent study of Patel and Daniele (2003).