Editor’s Note

Abstract

THE degree to which musical meaning is accessible to listeners varies immensely. Some music has broad, even visceral, appeal and seems to be widely understood, while other musical traditions are esoteric to a point much finer than the bounds of enculturation and social class membership. Two of the three articles contained the current issue of Empirical Musicology Review (Volume 5, Number 2) represent remote locations on such a continuum: Country music and 12-tone serialism. First, Brandon Paul and David Huron address the use of ‘breaking voice’ as an affective ornament to grief related lyrics in Country music songs. In the second article, William Thomson discusses the gap between structural principles governing serial music—as described in the analytical formulations of doyens of American musicology—and structural relations that are perceptually relevant to listeners.