Carol Lynne Krumhansl

Carol Lynne Krumhansl's The Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch presents a series of experimental studies done over the decade of the 1980s, relating to the perception and cognition of pitch, harmony, and key. The book set new standards for the rigorous study of music cognition. In the years since, it has become one of the most widely cited texts in the field, exerting a profound influence on a wide range of areas such as expectation, key identification, music learning and development, music theory, music information retrieval, and cross-cultural music cognition. Concepts presented in the book, such as the tonal hierarchy theory and the associated probe-tone methodology, have become essential cornerstones in the field of music psychology.