Summary:
Interlude A, the first “extra-musical” discussion, explores the relationship between musical taste and human evolution / early development. It begins by exploring the notion, often casually asserted, that musical is “universal”. The interlude continues with plausible, archeologically-grounded accounts of our initial musical behavior—both using instruments and via singing. The latter approach raises the tantalizing question of whether we as a species first communicated by speaking or singing. All of this in turn leads into the larger, and more controversial, question of whether music arose within us as a targeted and adaptive evolutionary trait, or as merely a skill or tendency co-opted from other adaptive skills, especially language—or somewhere in between. All sides of this “big fat debate” are presented, with the author weighing in his two cents at the end.
Supplements:
( More on amusia ):
Technically, amusia involves a deficient level of neuronal communication in the right hemisphere of the brain, specifically involving the inferior frontal cortex and right auditory cortex, which can impair one’s ability to tonally encode pitch—that is, to tell one note from another. Congenital amusia is highly hereditary, occurring at nearly 40 percent. Oliver Sacks, for example, notes dozens of varieties of amusia, such as “dysharmonia”—an inability to process harmony; “dystimbria”—where musical tones are perceived as unpleasant noises, etc.
( More on music’s distinct universalism ):
Anthropologists like Claude Lévi-Strauss have likewise pointed to other “cultural universals” as well, such as dance, mythical stories, and visual arts—painting, sculpture, body art, etc. And yet, while cultures around the world may adopt these creative outputs more or less universally, that is not equivalent to saying that each member of each society has a personal affection for them on par with that directed to music; or at least not in the world today.
( More on Ivan Turk’s examination of Divje Babe “flute” ):
Specifically, in 2012, Turk conducted a series of X-ray exams (using computed micro-tomography) demonstrating definitely that the 5 holes (2 complete, 3 partial) are not the result of carnivore damage. While the results do not conclusively prove human construction, the prospect is still on the table. To bolster his argument, Turk oversaw a reconstruction of the “flute” (using the femur of a juvenile cave bear of similar size)—which was in fact capable of producing a 12-note scale over 3 octaves!
( More on the Hohle Fels pipe ):
Two Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 years ago) cave locations in particular have produced a treasure trove of musical specimens: the Isturitz (French Pyrenees) caves and those in the Ach Valley (Swabian Jura) of southwest Germany. The relatively small pipe (8 ½ inches long) of the Hohle Fels pipe has 5 complete and evenly spaced holes that demonstrate a considerable degree of craft and care, each smoothed by scraping, and enabling an airtight seal by the player’s fingertips.
( Additional definitions of “music” ):
To cite a few idiosyncratic definitions of “music”: “a fixing in sound of imagined virtualities” (composer Iannis Xenakis); “whatever people choose to recognize as such” (ethnomusicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez); and “that which embodies, entrains, and transposably intentionalizes time in sound and action” (musicologist Ian Cross).
( More on Darwin’s interest in music ):
Darwin, incidentally, was an avid music lover, particularly of his wife’s daily piano practicing—something that may have played a role in the place granted music in his theory; see also Derry, J. F. "Bravo Emma! Music in the life and work of Charles Darwin." Endeavour 33, no. 1 (2009): 35-38.
( More on Steven Brown’s group cohesion argument ):
Brown cites the specific musical demands of pitch blending and rhythmic synchrony (all participants aligning to the same beat) as requiring neurobiological adaptation that would enable such cohesion (via group singing) to take place in the first place.
( More on Isabelle Peretz’s “module” theory ):
Vital for Peretz is to clarify that this musical “module” (after the model by Jerry Fodor) is not necessarily tied to a single brain “localization”, but rather is “neurally separable” into various areas of the brain—within various parts of the inferior frontal lobe. At the same time, merely possessing an innate ability doesn’t prove that it stems from a domain-specific “module”, for innate skills can arise from more “general purpose” processing ability (e.g., language), as Pinker has claimed for all music processing. However, Peretz strongly refutes this prospect for tonal encoding (and perhaps other musical functions), and in particular by virtue of her study of individuals with “acquired” amusia caused by brain injury.
( More on the “theory of mind” ):
Theory of Mind is believed to have taken root early in primate development, as far back as 6 million years ago—with a far more complete version arising uniquely in humans at the dawn of our own species, around 200,000 years ago.
( More on the “mixed origins of music” theory and its connection to “chills” ):
Altenmüller claims that “chill” responses are an ancient adaptive trait— going back some 3.2 million years—whereby many years later Homo sapiens came to develop improved auditory perception and memory consolidation, since “chill” moments are more strongly remembered. See Interlude G for more the origins and musical connection to “chills”.
Principal Bibliography:
Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (London: Picador, 2012 )
Nettl, Bruno. “Music” Grove Music Online
Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-Three Discussions (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015)
Adler, Daniel S. “Archaeology: The Earliest Musical Tradition,” Nature 460, no. 7256 (2009)
Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)
Aniruddh D. Patel, Music, Language, and the Brain (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999)
Sandra E. Trehub, “Musical Predispositions in Infancy,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 930, no. 1 (2001)
Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Dutton, 2006)
Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Random House, 2015)
External Links:
7 Theories on Why We Evolved to Love Music (PBS)