Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2000
Hierarchical and other historically dominant models of perceived musical organisation are increasingly inapplicable to new musical processes and repertoire. The next major paradigm shift for music models, structures and concepts, perhaps comparable in importance to that in which polyphony gave way to homophony, may be a shift of emphasis from means of acoustic production and the nature of sound per se to new musical models based on psychoacoustics, cognitive studies and subjective auditory experience.