These subdisciplines, although entirely distinct from each other, give far greater attention to mental processes than earlier theories which concentrated exclusively on the music itself. An apparently different set of questions emerges in computational studies, where the question of how music itself may be represented for symbolic processing reveals the binding influence of all representational systems on the results of queries dependent upon them. Such questions have had significant influence on the growth of cognitive theories, because actual applications reveal how devoid of value the results of psychologically deficient representations may be. At the same time they force the enquirer to choose between performance and notation as a basis for theorizing about music. A similar dichotomy is evident when confronting temporal processes with intellectual constructions of them.
Inherent contradictions call into question the validity of such constructions.
Four papers are offered as a basis for broader discussion. The question whether and what represents was enormously exaggerated through much of the twentieth century. The idea of absolute music-an absolute category of music which refers to nothing or refers only to itself. Many sign systems explore elaborations of structure which supersede their original representational functions. We can understand musical abstraction as a development comparable to these.