The Musical Foregrounding Hypothesis: How Music Influences the Perception of Sung Language

Abstract

Abstract The question how music influences the perception of sung language is rather complicated. There are indications that music enhances lyric perception, but also that it obstructs it. Sometimes we are deeply moved by lyrics, sometimes we don’t even hear them. The linguistic concept of foregrounding, might be helpful to understand this paradoxical process. Foregrounding (the use of metaphors and parallelisms, etcetera) is supposed to draw attention to the language by obstructing normal understanding of it1. The Musical Foregrounding Hypothesis (MFH) states that matching words to music has a similar, though much more complex, effect to language perception. Language— music— cognition— education—music therapy— poetics— advertising—song writing