Timing in speech and music of contemporary English and Scottish composers

Abstract

This research examines the links connecting speech and music, and seeks to provide innovative evidence for the long-debated question whether or not speech prosody of a language leaves a notable imprint in its music. Previous studies have frequently focused on the distinction between music from composers who speak a language classed either as ‘stress-timed’ (like English, German) or as ‘syllable-timed’ (like French, Italian), with rather mixed results. Given that the typological distinction between the two rhythm templates is considered controversial, it may be not surprising that to date, empirical support for the idea that the native language of a composer influences their music is limited. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis by eliminating some methodological issues known from previous research. It collected spoken and musical data from contemporary classical composers, native speakers either of Standard Southern British English or of Standard Scottish English. The two varieties of English were chosen for their distinct timing patterns. The results provide support for the idea that music of a composer shares some temporal patterning with their spoken language, and are discussed with reference to cognitive processes of implicit statistical learning.