What do we mean by 'music'? Talk by Professor Ian Cross Madingley Lectures

Professor Ian Cross, Director of the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge, delivers a public lecture at Madingley Hall on 6 May 2014.

Since 1980 Prof Cross has been involved in experimental investigations of the perception of tonal structures as well as of the role of culture and formal education in shaping musical cognition. He has explored the general limits and constraints on scientific accounts of music and is particularly involved in research into the relation between music and evolutionary theory.

He is the author of over a hundred papers and book chapters, and was co-editor of Musical Structure and Cognition (1985) and Representing Musical Structure (1991), both published by Academic Press. More recently, he has co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology and the volume Language and Music as Cognitive Systems (2011), both published by OUP. Ian Cross is also a guitarist.

The lecture is chaired by Professor John Rallison, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at Cambridge, and introduced by Dr Rebecca Lingwood, Director of Continuing Education.

Please note that the lecture proper begins at the 03:25 minute point in the video.