Perceiving the End: Effects of Tonal Relationships on Melodic Completion

Two experiments examined listeners' sensitivity to the structural markers of melodic completion. In Experiment 1, both musicians and nonmusicians were asked to rate the ending of folk melodies for their degree of "completeness" and "tonal appropriateness." Results showed that melodies ending with the conventional leading tone-to-tonic progression were rated the most complete and tonally appropriate to the underlying key, more so than melodies ending with the submediant-to-tonic or the tonic-to-dominant progressions. Conversely, melodies ending on the leading tone seemed the most incomplete and tonally inappropriate. In Experiment 2, the perceptual salience of certain pitch functions was enhanced significantly by the pattern of rhythmic accentuation within a melody's context and the presence of the rare tritone interval. The results illustrate an interactive influence of pitch and temporal variables on musical perception and thereby highlight the need to incorporate dynamic pattern factors into internal representations of tonality.