Categories and Types of Anticipation in Music

Anticipation in music is analysed by presenting an inventory of the possibilities of musical anticipation together with a tentative discussion of the cognitive mechanisms that may give rise to them. The "logic" of the phenomenon is exposed, laying bare the interplay between prospective and retrospective elements, and arriving at three categories of anticipation. It is further argued that in order to come to terms with musical anticipation, one must take account of the fact that we engage with music in three different ways: listening, reading, and performing. Six different types of anticipation are then proposed in relation to four structural aspects that may govern musical apprehension - continuity, segmentation, hierarchy, and network. Finally some musical examples illustrating various kinds of anticipation are presented and commented upon.