comments on music, ethology, and evolution
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Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1060: 3–5 (2005). © 2005 New York Academy of Sciences.doi: 10.1196/annals.1360.060
Comments on Music, Ethology, and Evolution
IAN CROSS
Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, United Kingdom
The three papers in this section adopt different approaches to the issue of music inevolution and its relationship to behaviors of species other than humans. McDermottand Hauser present the results of an empirical study that demonstrates that tamarinsexhibit neither a preference for consonant over dissonant musical sounds nor anaversion to a sound that humans find extremely unpleasant, concluding that a pref-erence for consonant over dissonant sounds may be a species-specific—and music-specific—trait in humans. Merker gives a general account of the developmental tra-jectory of vocal learning in birds in the context of a discussion of ritual—as opposedto instrumental—behavior, rooting an account of the origins of music in the humancapacity for highly developed conformal or imitative behavior. Fitch provides abroad and original treatment of the evolutionary origins of music that makes insight-ful use of comparative data; in the course of his discussion, he identifies a crucialand as yet virtually unexplored research question, that of the origins of human rhyth-mic behaviors, suggesting that “African ape percussive behavior…may…indicate apotential precursor of human instrumental music.”
McDermott and Hauser explore continuities in “musical” perception betweennonhuman species and humans by investigating whether tamarins are sensitive to adistinction between consonant and dissonant sounds. In part, this is motivated byfindings that human infants reliably discriminate between consonant and dissonantsounds, and that this capacity might well be innate. However, from the fact that hu-man infants are capable of distinguishing between types of sounds, it does not followthat such discriminations necessarily reflect mature musical (or, for that matter,linguistic) usages that may in part be the consequence of processes of enculturation.As has been demonstrated,1 infants may exhibit sensitivities to aspects of musicalstructures, to which adults who have extensive (though informal) musical experiencein particular cultures may not be sensitive. In order to investigate cross-specific per-ceptual continuities that would bear on the issue of the roots of the human facultyfor music, it would seem necessary to identify classes of perceptual sensitivities thatare essentially musical within a wide range of cultures. Alternatively, one might seekto distinguish contexts for the exercise of perceptual judgment that reflect common-alities of cross-cultural musical practices and investigate the existence of analoguesof such contexts in the behavioral ecologies of nonhuman species.
Address for correspondence: Ian Cross, Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music,University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, UK. Voice: +44-1223-335185; fax:+44-1223-335067.
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Merker notes the existence of similarities in processes of vocal learning in hu-mans and in the rather distantly related avian taxonomic class. These similaritiesmust be regarded as homoplasies, products of processes of convergent evolution,arising independently as a result of some common selection pressures (rather thanconstituting behavioral capacities that are a consequence of a common genetic heri-tage). He suggests the requirement for faithful duplication that lies at the heart of“ritual performance” (as opposed to instrumental behavior, which is causal with re-spect to an evident goal) shapes processes of vocal learning in both birdsong and hu-man music. Despite the attractiveness of this proposal, it can be argued that“transformation” rather than duplication might better represent the processes in-volved in the transmission of human behaviors (indeed, as has been argued,2 withrespect to all human cultural behaviors). Recent work by Nicholas Magriel (personalcommunication) on the learning of North Indian music within a hereditary musiciancaste indicates that when music-learning processes are primarily oral and performa-tive, children’s earlier musical productions (at around age 5 or 6) embody global andgeneric musical features, with vocal performance becoming precise and controlled,though generative rather than duplicative, from about age 11. Similar processes oftransformative generation rather than duplication seem to underpin the emergence ofchildren’s musical repertoires in other societies,3 though all too little research hasbeen conducted on vocal and musical learning outside western traditions.
Fitch clearly sets out a broad agenda for exploring music in comparative and evo-lutionary contexts, and most explicitly seeks to address functional, cross-specificcommonalities in the use of sound and action that may bear on an understanding ofmusic. While many of his conclusions appear both substantive and substantial, hispaper reflects the nascent state of research in raising more questions than answers.However, one specific point in this paper, concerning the question of music’s seman-ticity, requires investigation.
In Fitch’s initial discussion of the relationship between language and music, hesuggests that while language possesses semanticity, music does not. This claim canbe contested, not least on the grounds that music is reported as meaningful by thosewho engage with and in it;4 moreover, a recent neuroscientific study cited by Fitch5
seems to indicate that both the time course and the neural substrates, implicated inthe experience of semantic incongruity, are common for both music and language.
From the perspective of conventional formal semantics where the unit of meaningis the word, Fitch is undoubtedly correct; however, recent approaches to semanticissues (such as functional semantics6) broaden the notion of the semantic in waysthat would certainly allow music a large measure of semanticity. Indeed, it can beargued that music and language are differentiable not by music’s lack of language’ssemantic capacities, but by the degree of consensual semantic specificity that isachievable in language and music.7 Music’s meanings may from time to time appearprecise and specific for any individual listener, but listeners are unlikely to experi-ence a common, specific, and precise meaning with respect to any particular musicalexperience; music’s meanings appear to embody a fundamental ambiguity. Fitchsuggests that “however one attempts to characterize musical meaning, the meaningof music and that of language are clearly distinct, and this difference is crucial tounderstanding these two related faculties.” It can be claimed instead, however, thatlanguage and music are both communicative media that have profoundly semanticdimensions yet are polar opposites with respect to their capacity to articulate speci-
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ficity of meaning. Hence not only differences, but similarities, in meaning processesin language and in music require consideration in assessing the human communica-tive faculties and their evolutionary roots.
REFERENCES
1. HANNON, E.E. & S.E. TREHU. 2005. Metrical categories in infancy and adulthood.Psychol. Sci. 16: 48–55.
2. SPERBER, D. 1996. Explaining Culture. Blackwell. Oxford. 3. BLACKING, J. 1967. Venda Children’s Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis.
Witwatersrand University Press. Johannesburg.4. BOHLMAN, S. 1999. Ontologies of music. In Rethinking Music. N. Cook & M. Everist,
Eds.: 17–34. Oxford University Press. Oxford.5. KOELSCH, S. et al. 2004. Music, language and meaning: brain signatures of semantic
processing. Nat. Neurosci. 7: 302–307.6. MILLIKAN, R.G. 2004. Varieties of Meaning. The Jean Nicod Lectures. F. Recanati,
Ed.: 228. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. 7. CROSS, I. 2005. Music and meaning, ambiguity and evolution. In Musical Communica-
tion. D. Miell, R. MacDonald & D. Hargreaves, Eds.: 27–43. Oxford UniversityPress. Oxford.