Subject: Re: the origin of music?
From: John Croft (mfmxhjcc@fs1.go.man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Jan 11 2001 - 13:25:58 EST
on 9/1/01 18:56, Chris Koenigsberg ckk@ckk.com at ckkyun@msn.com wrote:
> I guess the question for me is, (re the Angier article) how to explain
> the way some of us (everybody on this list, for instance, plus everyone
> who's a fan of the "avant-garde" etc. in various art forms) crave odd,
> weird, inharmonic, noisy, etc. experiences in our music, in the midst of
> all this apparently instinctual wired apparatus we have for seeking &
> creating harmony & melody?
Having studied this question for a couple of years, I feel safe in claiming
that there is *no* good evidence of any adaptation in humans that could be
accurately described as a music specialisation in the brain. All musical
ability is best explained in terms of cognitive abilities developed for
other purposes and borrowed for music. The literature on musical nativism is
riddled with misunderstandings and non sequiturs.
50 000 year old flutes are neither surprising nor evidence of any hardwired
specialisation, since they date from well after the biological evolution of
humans ceased, and well after the development of language (the most recent
big evolutionary step), upon which much of musical ability is parasitic.
> Like, my goal in this fantasy story would be being able to finally,
> truly, for once and for all, win the argument and shut someone up, by
> pointing to some real discovery, when they try and claim that 20th
> century music is unnatural, that dodecaphonic or serial music goes
> against nature etc. :-)
I wrote my masters thesis contra Lerdahl on this very point. It's a huge
pdf, but if anyone is interested I'm happy to send a copy privately.
john
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