The Origins of Music

by Steven Brown

Book Overview

The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology.

What biological and cognitive forces have shaped humankind's musical behavior and the rich global repertoire of musical structures? What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures? In this groundbreaking book, musicologists, biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262731436
• ISBN13: 9780262731430
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.9" x 10.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and Challenging Approaches to a Difficult Topic

"The Origins of Music" derives from a 1997 international workshop of the Swedish Institute for Biomusicology. The result is a fascinating journey into a vast world of ideas, with interplay, disagreement and contradiction abounding. Few readers will have the background to move easily through all these articles. However, wading through the quagmire of scientific writing rewards the reader with some remarkable insights. Little is actually proven, and the editors could have done more to reconcile or enumerate the contradictions between some of the approaches. But for the most part, the writers are sufficiently aware of the difficulties involved in applying their specific research results to general theories about the origins of music.An introductory chapter discusses the comparatively new field of biomusicology, with its tripartite subdivision into evolutionary musicology, neuromusicology, and comparative musicology. The issue, which will command much of the book, of whether certain features of music are biological or cultural is raised. Unfortunately, all too often the weight is given to the biological answer without overwhelming evidence. Another significant question is the relevance of animal "song". Only those working directly in the field of animal song approach this with caution--none argue anything stronger than a "convergent evolution" between animal and human music. To apply the terms "song" and "music" to aural animal communications is to raise a whole host of related but probably irrelevant associations--those of art, aesthetics, etc. Where music is so broadly defined as to include animal sounds (which can indeed be "musical" and quite lovely for us to listen to without being classified as "music") these associations muddy the water, and all too often the contributors simply accept these problematic issues. One writer even wallows in them--in the book's final article, composer Mache absurdly claims that birdsong can ONLY be explained as an aesthetic act. We unquestionably have very limited understanding of how even the human brain processes our own music; that we have even less understanding of how animals perceive their own sounds and how their brains process them makes any statement about any complicated animal response speculative at best. Slater's chapter is noteworthy as he addresses this very issue of relevance with commendable caution: "Considering only songbirds...there are close to 4,000 species....It would thus not be surprising if almost any characteristic found in human music were discovered in one or a few of them. But such similarities are likely to be coincidental..." Articles on human evolution of musical potential are fascinating explorations of real evidence. Although of course music does not fossilize, these scientists have taken various ingenious approaches from the thorough examination of a Paleolithic bone flute to the casting of brains inside fossil skulls to examine their gross anatomy, and the result

Landmark

The number of books devoted to language evolution could now fill many bookshelves. So it is very exciting to see the first book ever devoted to the question of music evolution. This book is unquestionably a landmark and will be discussed for many years to come. Evolutionary musicologists will certainly have a lot to learn from their cousins in the language field but they will also get the chance to explore important new ground not covered by them. The book deals with animal song, general issues in human evolution, different proposals for the evolution of music and a final section about universals in music. I was pleased to see renowned thinkers like Derek Bickerton, Peter Marler and Dean Falk writing about music for the first time, and doing it so cogently. That, in itself, is worth the cover price. The book fulfills its promise of opening up an interdisciplinary dialog on the subject of music origins. The editors can be congratulated for bringing together an international group of contributors; no fewer than 8 countries are represented in the contributors list-a rare occurrence in such edited volumes. Despite this, the writing style is consistently high and with the exception of a few typos, the book was quite easy to navigate. Some of the chapters, like Miller's chapter on sexual selection reflect current "hot" topic in evolutionary psychology, and will no doubt lead to lots of discussions. Other chapters, such as those on universals, touch on topics that have been dormant or forgotten in musicology. It is exciting for me to see musical universals being discussed again after so many years of silence. The section called Theories of Music Origins will, no doubt, spur future thinking on the topic. This book is a strong beginning and I highly recommend this book to people who really want to delve into something completely fresh and new. They will not be disappointed.