Gestaltango: A Research White Paper on Perceptual Music Design and the Mavromatis Perceptual Music Architecture (PMA)

This paper introduces the Gestaltango Framework (GEF) and its theoretical architecture, the Mavromatis Perceptual Music Architecture (PMA): a principled system translating the perceptual laws of Gestalt psychology, the therapeutic principles of Gestalt Therapy (GT), and the embodied phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) into pre-compositional decisions governing instrumentation, temporal structure, harmonic language, melodic design, dynamic profile, and visual-typographic presentation. The PMA constitutes, to the author's knowledge, the first systematic framework to map Gestalt perceptual laws and GT experiential cycles onto individual musical parameters. The framework emerges from two decades of practitioner-researcher observation as an Argentine Tango teacher, choreographer, performer, and educator active across more than forty countries, documented in Tango Secrets (Educator X [Mavromatis, P.], 2021) and in parallel scholarly work integrating GT with Argentine Tango (Mavromatis, 2025a, n.d.). The GEF was operationalized in Gestaltango (Shape of Tango), released 19 November 2025 via Music Galore (Mavromatis, 2025b), a 2-minute 45-second composition encoding Gestalt perceptual laws and GT cycles as compositional parameters. Grounded in Wertheimer (1923), Koffka (1935), Perls et al. (1951), Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962), and Bregman (1990), and informed by tango neuroscience (Basso et al., 2021; Chauvigné & Brown, 2018a; Josef et al., 2019), the paper presents the theoretical basis, compositional methodology, six formally operationalized hypotheses, and an argued publication roadmap. It does not report empirical findings; it establishes a rigorous conceptual architecture for future experimental research. The PMA is proposed as a contribution to music perception, applied psychology, phenomenological aesthetics, perceptual music engineering, and tango-informed GT practice.