Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The aim of this study is to analyse the auditory scene of musical works and to demonstrate that different compositions may prompt the emergence of distinctly interpreted perceptual streams in the listener's mind. The research focuses on selected excerpts from works by Alexandre Guilmant, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Antonio Vivaldi, which, due to their unique characteristics, elicit diverse auditory impressions. By combining score analysis with auditory scene analysis, this paper seeks to explain how different interpretations of the same sounds result in dissimilar auditory impressions. The auditory scene analysis presented here provides deeper insight into the process of stream formation and its implications for musical performance and aesthetic perception. The findings indicate that perceptual stream formation in music is considerably more complex and context-dependent than previously assumed, with implications for how listeners interpret auditory scenes.