The latter portion of the essay presents examples of two applications of research on metaphor to music theory. In the second portion of the essay I review cognitive theories that utilize similar domains for the characterization of cognition, with special attention given to Gilles Fauconnier's theory of mental spaces. I suggest that music constitutes a cognitive domain, which is furnished with what I call properly musical concepts. I conclude by using the perspective developed in this approach to provide insights into Seeger's theory. In this paper I explore the role of conceptual models and cross-domain mapping in theories of music, focusing on perspectives on the hierarchical organization of music.
Conceptual models are cognitive structures that are used to guide inference and reason.
Cross-domain mapping is a process through which one domain is structured in terms of another. I review the historical origins and structural attributes of two distinct conceptual models of hierarchy and examine how they were applied to music in the early nineteenth century.