The Springer Handbook of Auditory Research presents a series of comprehensive and synthetic reviews of the fundamental topics in modern auditory research. The v- umes are aimed at all individuals with interests in hearing research including advanced graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and clinical investigators. The volumes are intended to introduce new investigators to important aspects of hearing science and to help established investigators to better understand the fundamental theories and data in fields of hearing that they may not normally follow closely. Each volume presents a particular topic comprehensively, and each serves as a synthetic overview and guide to the literature. As such, the chapters present neither exhaustive data reviews nor original research that has not yet appeared in pe- reviewed journals. The volumes focus on topics that have developed a solid data and conceptual foundation rather than on those for which a literature is only beg- ning to develop. New research areas will be covered on a timely basis in the series as they begin to mature.

The increasing prevalence of musical stimulation in our everyday environment makes studies of musical listening, comprehension and memory important. Music has simply become a pervasive aspect of the experienced environment for most of us; along with enhanced levels of machine sounds, musical sound sources are contributing to a virtual transformation of contemporary soundscapes occurring in many industrial countries. In spite of such trends, arguably the mainstream research in psychology and related fields has been slow to devote concentrated attention to this phenomenon and what it might mean. As a result, with respect to more established fields of research (e.g., visual perception, speech perception, attention and memory etc.), less is known about how people perceive and respond to complex, non-random, acoustic signals found in musical events. Although these topics reside in the domain of music research, this field is a relatively new one, with a history that dates back only about 25 years. Nevertheless, it is now a vibrant and rapidly growing field that draws from multiple disciplines (psychology, psychoacoustics, computer science, music theory, and so forth) to seek answers to questions about how we listen to musical events in our world. It tackles questions about pitch perception in complex patterns, about the role of tonal schemes as well as effects of metrical and rhythmic schemes on musical listening behaviors. It also examines abilities of children and adults to perceive and comprehend dynamic sound patterns. Emotional responses to music are also studied; and overarching all of this are exciting new neuroscience findings concerned with neural responses to musical events.

Music Perception introduces its audience to these and related basic issues concerned with listening to music. It also illustrates how knowledge about music perception may ultimately lead to a broader understanding of conventional concepts regarding perception, attention and memory.