Cognitive Mimesis in Music and the Extended Mind Theory

Andy Clark and David Chalmers redefined the boundary of the mind in "The Extended Mind" (1998). Clark and Chalmers's central argument is that if something in the world functions as a cognitive process while an individual performs some task, that part of the world is part of that individual's cognitive processes during that time. For example, someone with Alzheimer's might use a notebook to remember details, and that notebook should be considered a part of his extended cognitive system as long as it meets certain criteria. This dissertation takes this idea and applies it to music to create a personal phenomenology.;After a background of the extended mind theory in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 through 4 explore how specific pieces mimic cognitive processes and become part of an extended cognitive system. Following a more traditional analysis, Chapter 2 explores how Gyorgy Ligeti's micropolyphonic composition Lux aeterna (1968) uses "gap" pitches to maintain an unchanging aural facade. In maintaining this facade, the typically active interplay between past, present and future becomes counteracted and the listener starts to hear Lux aeterna actively retaining the past in the present through the music, rather than through cognition. The result is a listening experience that allows the composition to function as the listener's processes of retention and attention. Chapter 3 also begins with a more traditional analysis before discussing how Steve Reich's Piano Phase (1967) enacts a similar sense of retention alongside the added process of comparison. By mimicking the process of comparison, Piano Phase evokes a goal-oriented listening experience where the listener makes quality decisions on different heard configurations to create a future work. I argue that Reich executed exactly this, using his early phasing works as external thought experiments within the global compositional process of Music for Eighteen Musicians. Chapter 4 adapts the extended mind theory to grant cognition to characters in Claude Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1895) and Sergei Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel (1927). With both works focused on a principle heroine with clouded intentions, the music mimics mental functions to create defined, music-bound cognitive states for the characters on stage.