This concluding chapter reviews some of the main ideas that have been featured in the preceding chapters, and goes on to consider whose listening (and therefore whose meaning) the theory attempts to explain. The relationship between an ecological approach to music perception and that offered in more mainstream psychology of music is critically discussed, and some empirical questions arising out of the ecological theory are identified. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ecology and music analysis, ecology and hermeneutics, a re-visiting of the concept of affordance as it relates to...

This concluding chapter reviews some of the main ideas that have been featured in the preceding chapters, and goes on to consider whose listening (and therefore whose meaning) the theory attempts to explain. The relationship between an ecological approach to music perception and that offered in more mainstream psychology of music is critically discussed, and some empirical questions arising out of the ecological theory are identified. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ecology and music analysis, ecology and hermeneutics, a re-visiting of the concept of affordance as it relates to music, and a reiteration of the importance of understanding music perception in relation to a broadly defined notion of action.