The Psychology of Music in Multimedia

The Psychology of Music in Multimedia,bySiu-Lan Tan, An- nabel J. Cohen, Scott D. Lipscomb, and Roger A. Kendall. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013, 432 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-960815-7. $60.00.Numerous colleagues and I have been eagerly anticipating the publication of this volume since we first became aware of its preparation at relevant academic conferences. The result is impres- sive. The contributors represent a wide variety of disciplinary and conceptual approaches to the topic, and the work provides rigorous substance to the ever-growing realization that the presence of an image changes what we "hear" and the presence of a sound changes what we "see." A total of 20 authors contribute 17 chapters that bring together research findings relevant to audio- visual perception in a cohesive, intelligent, and critical manner, drawing meaningful inferences, and outlining important follow-up research questions.The Psychology of Music in Multimedia is well-edited, laid out, and contextualized, filling several gaps in the related literature. It represents a first systematic attempt to bring together the vast majority of significant research (primarily empirical) addressing cross-modal perception of audio-visual composites, in a volume that is ambitious in scope. The four editors have gone to great lengths in the book's opening and closing chapters to situate each contribution in the context of the others, tease out common threads or potential conflicts, and make a convincing and critically alert argument for the conceptually common objectives of a rather diverse field of inquiry. Beyond successfully articulating the en- deavor's accomplishments and coherent identity, the editorial chapters also present a model for future editorial work willing to self-reflectively and critically expand from providing intelligent summaries into distilling potential new knowledge, not explicitly springing from any of the individual contributions alone. The contributing authors, who include all editors, have gone to analo- gous lengths to provide focused detailed presentations and analy- ses of their specific topics, whether on modeling, exploring, or analyzing audio-visual composites' creation, presentation, and per- ception/cognition. Furthermore, each chapter engages in a review of a substantial segment of the related literature, with the combined "References" sections constituting a valuable resource in itself.As a whole, the work makes an earnest effort to engage both the empirical and the reflective/speculative research branches of the overarching topic in a productive "conversation." This is largely explicit in the Foreword, provided by Nicholas Cook, and in the opening and closing editorial chapters, but less so in the remainder of the text. In what the editors assess as a reflection of the "scope and infancy of the entire endeavor" (p. 392), contributed chapters illustrate an overall subtle awareness of the rest of the contributors' work and a still nonuniform awareness/appreciation of directly or indirectly relevant research. The occasional "local" absence from specific chapters of direct reference to key relevant works is one manifestation of this observation (e.g., absence of D. Huron's work from Chapter 4, A. D. Patel's work from Chapters 5 and 8, C. L. Krumhansl's work from Chapter 11, or S. M. Eisenstein's work from Chapters 10 and 11). The benefit of a bird's-eye view enables the editors to set up a highly coherent stage in their introductory chapter, presenting significant interrelated directions and questions. Many return in the closing editorial chapter to remind us that, even though all questions posed in the introduction may have, at some level, been explored, many are still open and still important.The table of contents clearly reflects the organizational princi- ples that bring this volume together, the opening chapter further elucidates and justifies these principles, and both are freely avail- able on the publisher's Web site, along with an extensive Com- panion Website to several of the chapters. …