Musical Predictions, Redux

In response to my recent post on the neuroscience of musical predictions, Alex Rehding, the Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard, wrote in to offer a musical theorist perspective. He makes several excellent points, and complicates the neuroscience in useful ways, so I thought I'd reproduce the relevant parts of his email below:

The point you raise in your latest posting -- about expectation and prediction -- is one that has fascinated music theorists pretty much for the last 200...