We propose an approach reconciling the ultimate-level explanations proposed by Savage et al. and Mehr et al. as to why music evolved. We also question the current adaptationist view of culture, which too often fails to disentangle distinct fitness benefits.

Music is an artistic cultural innovation, and therefore it may be considered as intuitive thought expressed in symbols, which can efficiently convey multiple meanings in learning, thinking, and transmission, selected for and passed on through cultural evolution. The symbolic system has personal adaptive benefits besides social ones, which should not be overlooked even if music may tend more to the latter.

What was the role of music in the evolutionary history of human beings? We address this question from the point of view that musicality can be defined as a cognitive trait. Although it has been argued that we will never know how cognitive traits evolved (Lewontin, 1998), we argue that we may know the evolution of music by investigating the fundamental cognitive mechanisms of musicality, for example, relative pitch, tonal encoding of pitch, and beat induction. In addition, (...) we show that a nomological network of evidence (Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004) can be built around the hypothesis that musicality is a cognitive adaptation. Within this network, different modes of evidence are gathered to support a specific evolutionary hypothesis. We show that the combination of psychological, medical, physiological, genetic, phylogenetic, hunter–gatherer, and cross-cultural evidence indicates that musicality is a cognitive adaptation. (shrink)

Language- and music-readiness are demonstrated as related within comparative neuroprimatology by elaborating three hypotheses concerning music-readiness (MR): The (musicological) rhythm-first hypothesis (MR-1), the combinatoriality hypothesis (MR-2), and the socio-affect-cohesion hypothesis (MR-3). MR-1 states that rhythm precedes evolutionarily melody and tonality. MR-2 states that complex imitation and fractionation within the expanding spiral of the mirror system/complex imitation hypothesis (MS/CIH) lead to the combinatorial capacities of rhythm necessary for building up a musical lexicon and complex structures; and rhythm, in connection (...) with repetition and variation, scaffolds both musical form and content. MR-3 states that music’s main evolutionary function is to self-induce affective states in individuals to cope with distress; rhythm, in particular isochrony, provides a temporal framework to support movement synchronization, inducing shared affective states in group members, which in turn enhances group cohesion. This document reviews current behavioural and neurocognitive research relevant to the comparative neuroprimatology of music-readiness. It further proposes to extend MS/CIH through the evolution of the relationship of the language- and music-ready brain, by comparing “affective rhythm” and prosody – i.e. by comparatively approaching the language- and music-emotion link in neuroprimatology. (shrink)

Music is a universal human activity. Its evolution and its value as a cognitive resource are starting to come into focus. This chapter endeavors to give readers a clearer sense of the adaptive aspects of music, as well as the underlying cognitive and neural structures. Special attention is given to the important emotional dimensions of music, and an evolutionary argument is made for thinking of music as a prelinguistic embodied form of cognition—a form that is (...) still available to us as contemporary music creators and consumers. (shrink)

This is an attempt to describe and explain so-called timbre-based music as a special system of musicking, communication, and psychological and social usage, which along with its corresponding beliefs constitutes a viable alternative to “frequency-based” music. Unfortunately, the current scientific research into music has been skewed almost entirely in favor of the frequency-based music prevalent in the West. Subsequently, whenever samples of timbre-based music attract the attention of Western researchers, these are usually interpreted as “defective” (...) implementations of frequency-based music. The presence of discrete pitch is often regarded as the structural criterion that distinguishes music from non-music. We would like to present evidence to the contrary—in support of the existence of indigenous music systems based on the discretization and patterning of aspects of timbre, rather than pitch. This evidence comes mainly from extensive ethnographic research systematically conducted in eastern European and Asian parts of Russia from the 1890s. It involved the efforts of thousands of specialists and was coordinated by dozens of research institutions, and it has included not just ethnomusicology but linguistics, philology, organology, archaeology, anthropology, geography, and religious and social studies. Much of the data has not been translated into Western languages. Timbre-based tonal organization (TO) differs from that based on frequency in its personal orientation: musicking here occurs primarily for oneself and/or for close relatives/friends. Collective music-making is rare and exceptional. The foundation of timbre-based music seems to have vocal roots and rests on “personal song”—a system of personal identification through individualized patterns of rhythm, timbre, and pitch contour, utilized like a “human voice”—whose sound enables the recognition of a particular individual. The instrumental counterpart of the personalized singing tradition is the jaw harp tradition. The jaw harp is the principal musical instrument for at least 21 ethnicities in Russia, who occupy over half the territory of the country. The evolution of its TO forms the backbone for the development of timbre-based music art. Here, we provide the acoustic, socio-cultural, geographic, and chronological overview of timbre-based music. (shrink)

Together with language, music is perhaps the most distinctive behavioral trait of the human species. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in our species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the self-domestication view of human evolution, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to domestication (...) in other mammals, triggered by the reduction in reactive aggression responses to environmental changes. We specifically argue that self-domestication can account for some of the cognitive changes, and particularly for the behaviors conducive to the complexification of music through a cultural mechanism. We hypothesize four stages in the evolution of music under self-domestication forces: (1) collective protomusic; (2) private, timbre-oriented music; (3) small-group, pitch-oriented music; and (4) collective, tonally organized music. This line of development encompasses the worldwide diversity of music types and genres and parallels what has been hypothesized for languages. Overall, music diversity might have emerged in a gradual fashion under the effects of the enhanced cultural niche construction as shaped by the progressive decrease in reactive (i.e., impulsive, triggered by fear or anger) aggression and the increase in proactive (i.e., premeditated, goal-directed) aggression. (shrink)

In A Million Years of Music, Gary Tomlinson develops an extensive evolutionary narrative that emphasises several important components of human musicality and proposes a theory of the coalescence of these components. In this essay I tie some of Tomlinson’s ideas to five constraints on theories of music’s evolution. This provides the framework for organising my reconstruction of his model. Thereafter I focus on Tomlinson’s description of ‘entraining’ Acheulean toolmakers and offer several criticisms. I close with some tentative (...) proposals for further theorising. (shrink)

We compare and contrast the 60 commentaries by 109 authors on the pair of target articles by Mehr et al. and ourselves. The commentators largely reject Mehr et al.'s fundamental definition of music and their attempts to refute (1) our social bonding hypothesis, (2) byproduct hypotheses, and (3) sexual selection hypotheses for the evolution of musicality. Instead, the commentators generally support our more inclusive proposal that social bonding and credible signaling mechanisms complement one another in explaining cooperation within (...) and competition between groups in a coevolutionary framework (albeit with some confusion regarding terminologies such as “byproduct” and “exaptation”). We discuss the proposed criticisms and extensions, with a focus on moving beyond adaptation/byproduct dichotomies and toward testing of cross-species, cross-cultural, and other empirical predictions. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the ontological ideas of ancient Chinese music in the context of the formation of philosophical schools of Ancient China, which make it possible to identify a number of philosophical categories that underlie traditional chinese music and outline different approaches to its understanding and interpretation. Most Chinese researchers in the field of musical aesthetics focus on the art of music, rare to pay attention to the philosophical origins of the categories of (...) class='Hi'>music that past thinkers wrote about when analyzing laws of existence of the universe. Restoring and rethinking these values in the context of the philosophical and cultural analysis of ancient Chinese music is key to this work, which allows us to gain an understanding of the specifics of ancient Chinese culture and its musical heritage. The novelty of the work lies in carrying out the correlation of genesis of the musical ontology of Ancient China with the dynamics of the formation of the philosophical schools of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, their rise or fall depending on the historical and cultural situation. Musical philosophy in China has not yet become an independent discipline, so the presented work makes a significant contribution to the field of musical ontology. During the study, the authors revealed three main aspects which are basic for the ontology of ancient Chinese music: The nature of music has its source three categories: Tao, air and sound, existing both in a natural state in nature and embodied in musical structure and instruments; Sound and rhythm being the essence to any musical work, organize the sounding space in accordance with the cosmic order; The metaphysical nature of music is justified by the basic principles of Taoist philosophy and number theory. (shrink)

By fostering bonding, music illustrates marvelously its ability to induce emotional experience. But, music can induce emotion more generally as well. To help explain how music fosters bonding and induces other emotions, I propose that music derives this power from the evolution of what I term “gestural messaging.”.

The two target articles agree that processes of cultural evolution generate richness and diversity in music, but neither address this question in a focused way. We sketch one way to proceed – and hence suggest how the target articles differ not only in empirical claims, but also in their tacit, prior assumptions about the relationship between cognition and culture.

Savage et al. and Mehr et al. provide well-substantiated arguments that the evolution of musicality was shaped by adaptive functions of social bonding and credible signalling. However, they are too quick to dismiss byproduct explanations of music evolution, and to present their theories as complete unitary accounts of the phenomenon.

U tekstu se razmatra diskurs o muzici u teorijama evolucije Herberta Spensera i Carlsa Darvina. Iako su i Spenser i Darvin tumacili muziku kao nosioca ekspresije afekata i kao znacajni element u sveukupnoj evoluciji kao procesu napretka ka sve?razvijenijim? kulturama, diskursi ovih autora razisli su se u tumacenjima porekla i funkcije muzike. Dok je muzika za Darvina predstavljala jedno od sredstava u procesima selekcije tokom evolucije coveka kao bioloske vrste, Spenserova razmatranja navedenog problema u vecoj meri su se odnosila na (...) muziku kao komponentu u sociokulturnoj evoluciji. Ovo tumacenje koncepta evolucije muzike podrazumevalo je pristup muzici kao istorijskom i kulturnom fenomenu. U radu problematizujem mesto diskursa o muzici u teorijama Spensera i Darvina, isticem relevantne aspekte tumacenja koncepta evolucije muzike, te pominjem i uticaj koje su teorije ovih autora imale na zvanicne diskurse o muzici 19. veka. (shrink)

Music comprises a diverse category of cognitive phenomena that likely represent both the effects of psychological adaptations that are specific to music (e.g., rhythmic entrainment) and the effects of adaptations for non-musical functions (e.g., auditory scene analysis). How did music evolve? Here, we show that prevailing views on the evolution of music – that music is a byproduct of other evolved faculties, evolved for social bonding, or evolved to signal mate quality – are incomplete (...) or wrong. We argue instead that music evolved as a credible signal in at least two contexts: coalitional interactions and infant care. Specifically, we propose that (1) the production and reception of coordinated, entrained rhythmic displays is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling coalition strength, size, and coordination ability; and (2) the production and reception of infant-directed song is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling parental attention to secondarily altricial infants. These proposals, supported by interdisciplinary evidence, suggest that basic features of music, such as melody and rhythm, result from adaptations in the proper domain of human music. The adaptations provide a foundation for the cultural evolution of music in its actual domain, yielding the diversity of musical forms and musical behaviors found worldwide. (shrink)

This essay reviews Iain Morley’s The Prehistory of Music, an up-to-date and authoritative overview of recent research on evolution and cognition of musicality from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Given the diversity of the project explored, integration of evidence from multiple fields is particularly pressing, required for any novel evolutionary account to be persuasive, and for the project’s continued progress. Moreover, Morley convincingly demonstrates that there is much more to understanding musicality than is supposed by some theorists. I outline Morley’s (...) review of the archaeological and ethnographic literature, and then go on to critique his assessment of philosophical and evolutionary theories, offering some alternative perspectives that might better benefit his project. (shrink)

Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of (...) protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture. (shrink)

Cultures evolve. In one sense, this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of some culture at some time—say A.D. 1900. It should include all the languages, practices, ceremonies, edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some merged, some changed, and many new (...) elements will appear for the first time. A verbatim record of this changing inventory through history would not be science; it would be a data base. That is the truism: cultures evolve over time. Everybody agrees about that. Now let’s turn to the controversial question: how are we to explain the patterns to be found in that data base? Are there any good theories or models of cultural evolution? (shrink)

Recent neuropaleontological research suggests that the parietal lobe has increased in size as much as the frontal lobes in Homo Sapiens over the past 150,000 years, but has not provided a neuropsychological explanation for the evolution of human socialization or the development of religion. Drawing from several areas of research, (i.e., neurodevelopment, neuropsychology, paleoneurology, cognitive science, archeology, and anthropology), we argue that parietal evolution in Homo sapiens integrated sensations and mental processes into a more integrated subjective “sense of (...) self”. This enhanced self advanced prosocial traits (e.g., increased empathy, greater social bonding, enhanced theory of mind capacities), promoting more effective socialization skills (e.g., parenting, group cooperation). Conversely, when this enhanced sense of self became inhibited, powerful experiences of self-transcendence occurred. We believe these potent selfless experiences became increasingly sought after though ritual means (e.g., music, dance, vision quests, spirit travel), providing the foundations for the development of shamanism and religion. (shrink)

Cultures evolve. In one sense, this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of some culture at some time—say A.D. 1900. It should include all the languages, practices, ceremonies, edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some merged, some changed, and many new (...) elements will appear for the first time. A verbatim record of this changing inventory through history would not be science; it would be a data base. That is the truism: cultures evolve over time. Everybody agrees about that. Now let’s turn to the controversial question: how are we to explain the patterns to be found in that data base? Are there any good theories or models of cultural evolution? (shrink)

Collective, synchronous music-making is far from ubiquitous across traditional, small-scale societies. We describe societies that lack collective music and offer hypotheses to help explain this cultural variation. Without identifying the factors that explain variation in collective music-making across these societies, theories of music evolution based on social bonding (Savage et al.) or coalition signaling (Mehr et al.) remain incomplete.

Schooling fish, swarms of starlings, plodding wildebeest, and musicians all display impressive synchronization. To what extent do they use acoustic cues to achieve these feats? Could the acoustic cues used in movement synchronization be relevant to the treatment of movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease in humans? In this article, we build on the emerging view in evolutionary biology that the ability to synchronize movement evolved long before language, in part due to acoustic advantages. We use this insight to explore (...) potential mechanisms that explain why music therapy has beneficial effects for PD patients. We hypothesize that rhythmic auditory cues, particularly music, can stimulate neuronal and behavioral processes that ease the symptoms and potentially the causes of PD because the neural circuits used in auditory entrainment at individual and group levels are associated with dopamine production. We summarize current treatment of PD and outline how new insights from an evolutionary perspective could improve understanding and eventual treatment of movement disorders in humans. (shrink)

The concept of “gradually adaptive frameworks” is introduced as a model with the potential to describe the evolution of belief evaluative systems through the consideration of reasonable arguments and evidence. This concept is demonstrated through an analysis of specific points of disagreement between David Elliott’s praxial philosophy and Bennett Reimer’s aesthetic philosophy. A parallel case of disagreement is introduced from the literature of contemporary epistemology. This case, comprised of a disagreement between Thomas Kelly and Richard Feldman, deals explicitly with (...) the subject of “peer disagreement”. The discussion of this conceptual analysis is used to establish an advocacy position for the central positioning of critical thinking skills in any educative endeavor. (shrink)

The scientific investigation of music requires contributions from a diverse array of disciplines. Given the diverse methodologies, interests and research targets of the disciplines involved, we argue that there is a plurality of legitimate research questions about music, necessitating a focus on integration. In light of this we recommend a pluralistic conception of music—that there is no unitary definition divorced from some discipline, research question or context. This has important implications for how the scientific study of (...) class='Hi'>music ought to proceed: we show that some definitions are complementary, that is, they reflect different research interests and ought to be retained and, where possible, integrated, while others are antagonistic, they represent real empirical disagreement about music’s nature and how to account for it. We illustrate this in discussion of two related issues: questions about the evolutionary function of music, and questions of the innateness of music. These debates have been, in light of pluralism, misconceived. We suggest that, in both cases, scientists ought to proceed by constructing integrated models which take into account the dynamic interaction between different aspects of music. (shrink)

Since Darwin proposed that human musicality evolved through sexual selection, empirical evidence has supported intersexual selection as one of the adaptive functions of artistic propensities. However, intrasexual competition has been overlooked. We tested their relative importance by investigating the relationship between the self-perceived talent/expertise in 16 artistic and 2 sports modalities and proxies of intersexual selection and intrasexual competition in heterosexuals. Participants were 82 Brazilian men, 166 Brazilian women, 146 Czech men, and 458 Czech women. Factor analysis revealed five factors: (...) Literary-arts, Visual-arts, Musical-arts, Circus-arts, and Sports. Multivariate General Linear Model showed more associations of the arts to intersexual selection in women and to intrasexual selection in men, and overall more relationships in women than in men. In women, literary and musical-arts were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selections proxies, visual and circus-arts were related to elevated intersexual selection proxies, and sports were related to intrasexual selection proxies. In men, literary-arts and sports were related to elevated inter- and intrasexual selection proxies, musical-arts were related to intrasexual proxies, and circus-arts were related to intersexual proxies; visual-arts did not have predictors. Although present in both sexes, each sexual selection component has different relative importance in each sex. Artisticality functions to attract and maintain long/short-term partners, and to compete with mating rivals. (shrink)

It is frequently noted that a “crisis in language” accompanied the profound changes in human consciousness everywhere evident near the turn of the century. As the nature of reality itself became problematic—or at least suspect, distrusted for its imposition of limits upon individual imagination—so, necessarily, did the relationship of language to reality. Thus in the later nineteenth century, the adequacy of an essentially standardized form of “classical” writing was increasingly questioned as an effective vehicle for artistic expression: even though often (...) in “elevated” form, such writing bore too close a connection to ordinary discourse. Indeed, it was precisely the mutually shared, conventional aspects of language that came to be most deeply distrusted for their failure to mirror the more subjective, obscure, and improbable manifestations of a transcendent reality or, rather, realities—the plural reflecting an insistence upon the optional and provisional nature of human experience. Language in its normal manifestations—with its conventionalized vocabulary and standardized rules for syntactical combination—proved inadequate for an artistic sensibility demanding, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “a world of abnormally drawn perspectives.”This dissatisfaction with “normal” language received its classic statement through Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos. Writing in 1902, Hofmannsthal conveys through the figure of the aristocratic Chandos the loss of an encompassing framework within which the various objects of external reality are connected with one another and integrated with the internal reality of human feelings. Chandos’ world has become one of disparate, disconnected fragments, resistant to the abstractions of ordinary language. It is a world characterized by “a sort of feverish thought, but thought in a material that is more immediate, more fluid, and more intense than that of language.” Chandos longs for a new language in which not a single word is known to me, a language in which mute objects speak to me and in which perhaps one day, in the grave, I will give account of myself before an unknown judge.”2 The content and forms of art thus shifted away from exterior reality, which no longer provided a stable, “given” material, toward language itself—to “pure” language in a sense closely related to the symbolists’ “pure” poetry. “No artist tolerates reality,” Nietzsche proclaimed.3 And Gustave Flaubert’s farsighted advice to himself was that he should write “a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style.”4 2. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief,” Gesammelte Werke, ed. Bernd Schoeller with Rudolf Hirsch, 10 vols. , 7:471-72; my translation. All further translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.3. Friedrich Nitzsche, Complete Works, ed. Oscar Levy, 18 vols. , vol. 15, The Will to Power, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, p. 74.4. Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert to Louise Colet, 16 Jan. 1852, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller , p. 154. Other passages in this letter are equally remarkable for their “modernist” tone. Flaubert argues that from the standpoint of l’Art pur, “one might almost establish the axiom that there is no such thing as subject—style in itself being an absolute manner of seeing things” . Further:The finest works are those that contain the least matter; the closer expression comes to thought, the closer language comes to coinciding and merging with it, the finer the result. I believe the future of Art lies in this direction. I see it, as it has developed from its beginnings, growing progressively more ethereal …. Form, in becoming more skillful, becomes attenuated, it leaves behind all liturgy, rule, measure; the epic is discarded in favor of the novel, verse in favor of prose; there is no longer any orthodoxy, and form is as free as the will of its creator. This progressive shedding of the burden of tradition can be observed everywhere: governments have gone through similar evolution, from oriental despotisms to the socialisms of the future. [P. 154] Robert P. Morgan, professor of music at the University of Chicago, is currently writing a history of twentieth-century music and working on a study of form in nineteenth-century music. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “On the Analysis of Recent Music” and “Musical Time/Musical Space”. (shrink)

Isochrony is crucial to the rhythm of human music. Some neural, behavioral and anatomical traits underlying rhythm perception and production are shared with a broad range of species. These may either have a common evolutionary origin, or have evolved into similar traits under different evolutionary pressures. Other traits underlying rhythm are rare across species, only found in humans and few other animals. Isochrony, or stable periodicity, is common to most human music, but isochronous behaviors are also found in (...) many species. It appears paradoxical that humans are particularly good at producing and perceiving isochronous patterns, although this ability does not conceivably confer any evolutionary advantage to modern humans. This article will attempt to solve this conundrum. To this end, we define the concept of isochrony from the present functional perspective of physiology, cognitive neuroscience, signal processing, and interactive behavior, and review available evidence on isochrony in the signals of humans and other animals. We then attempt to resolve the paradox of isochrony by expanding an evolutionary hypothesis about the function that isochronous behavior may have had in early hominids. Finally,we propose avenues for empirical research to examine this hypothesis and to understand the evolutionary origin of isochrony in general. (shrink)

After they diverged from panins, hominins evolved an increasingly committed terrestrial lifestyle in open habitats that exposed them to increased predation pressure from Africa’s formidable predator guild. In the Pleistocene, _Homo_ transitioned to a more carnivorous lifestyle that would have further increased predation pressure. An effective defense against predators would have required a high degree of cooperation by the smaller and slower hominins. It is in the interest of predator and potential prey to avoid encounters that will be costly for (...) both. A wide variety of species, including carnivores and apes and other primates, have therefore evolved visual and auditory signals that deter predators by credibly signaling detection and/or the ability to effectively defend themselves. In some cooperative species, these predator deterrent signals involve highly synchronized visual and auditory displays among group members. Hagen and Bryant (_Human Nature_, _14_(1), 21–51, 2003) proposed that synchronized visual and auditory displays credibly signal coalition quality. Here, this hypothesis is extended to include credible signals to predators that they have been detected and would be met with a highly coordinated defensive response, thereby deterring an attack. Within-group signaling functions are also proposed. The evolved cognitive abilities underlying these behaviors were foundations for the evolution of fully human music and dance. (shrink)

This article explores and examines research in the field of human vocalization, proposing an evolutionary sequence for human acoustic perception and productive response. This involves updating and extending Charles Darwin’s 1871 proposal that musical communi­cation predated language, while providing the anatomical and behavioral foundations for the articulacy on which it depends. In presenting evidence on which a new consensus regarding the emergence of human vocal ability may be based, we present and review contributions from a wide range of disciplines, illustrating (...) that the phenomenon of human musicality may have had more of a core function in shaping our anatomy and culture than has hitherto been recognized. Essential to the adaptive sequence on which this depends is human perceptual and productive response to the properties of the Harmonic Series. Both music and language have emerged from the auditory and performative consequences of this relationship. (shrink)

The roots and evolution of two concepts usually thought to be Western in origin-musica mundana (the music of the spheres) and musica humana (music's relation to the human soul)-are explored. Beginning with a study of the early creeds of the Near East, Professor Meyer-Baer then traces their development in the works of Plato and the Gnostics, and in the art and literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Previous studies of symbolism in music have tended (...) to focus on a single aspect of the problem. In this book the concepts of musica humana and musica mundane are related to philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of religion and are given a rightful place in the history of civilization. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology often does not sufficiently document the innate constraint and domain specificity required for strong adaptationist argument. We develop these criteria within the domain of music. First, we advocate combining computational, developmental, cross-cultural, and neuroscience research to address the ways in which a domain is innately constrained. Candidate constraints in music include the importance of the octave and other simple pitch ratios, the categorization of the octave into tones, the importance of melodic contour, tonal hierarchies, and principles (...) of grouping and meter. Second, we advocate combining psychological, neuroscience, and genetic research across cognitive domains to address the domain specificity of such constraints. Currently available evidence suggests that the innate constraints in music are not specific to that domain, making it unclear which domain(s) provided the relevant selection pressures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] by Irmgard MerktBeatrice McNamaraIrmgard Merkt, Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] (Regensburg: Conbrio, 2019)Irmgard Merkt, a German music education scholar, is a pioneer of intercultural music education with regard to the development of the (...) concept Schnittstellensansatz, literally “interface approach,” as an initial concept of intercultural music education in the 1980s. Her book Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] is a new philosophy of music education for schools, in which children and young people with and without disabilities as well as children and young people from the most diverse milieus and cultural backgrounds share a learning space.1 Merkt advocates for a broad concept of inclusion that refers both to the inclusion of children with different skills and abilities on a physiological and psychological level along with the integration of pupils from different cultures of origin. The overriding goal for the author is recategorization,2 which makes the terms “common school,” “school for all” or “inclusive music instruction” obsolete and which allows pupils to attend a kind of school and a kind of music education [End Page 187] that is inherently inclusive. Merkt even goes as far as promoting the dissolution of subject-specific margins of music education and establishing an omnipresence of music in everyday school life instead.3 However, I think it should be pointed out that completely dissolving or dismissing music education into interdisciplinarity or integrating music education into subject groups such as Aesthetic Education,4 would be compliant with attempts made on the level of educational policy in order to reduce the quantity of qualified music teaching within the curriculum.5 Nevertheless, Merkt’s critique of the German school system is nothing short of appropriate in view of the prevalent system-immanent character of exclusion as the recent Programme for International Student Assessment-report of 2018 reveals.6 Furthermore, it is essential to draw conclusions as to the extent to which music instruction can do justice to the diversity of the student body, both on an integrative and on an inclusive level.The first chapter of Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion offers an overview of past and present viewpoints on the topic of inclusion. Ensuing, the second chapter outlines the evolution of music education and teacher training in view of students with special needs. Chapter Three focuses on integration, Chapter Four traces the lines of development in the field of intercultural music pedagogy, while in Chapter Five Merkt advocates an encompassing culture of recognition in which educators, learners, and different music cultures are acknowledged to an equal extent. In Chapter Six the author delves into the very beginning of music and its coincidence with the evolution of humanity from homo sapiens to homo musicus through the lens of science and musicology. The seventh chapter of the book constitutes a synopsis of the main ideas which are then amalgamated into the concept of “Mit einer Frage um die Welt” [around the world with one question].A key tenet of Merkt’s publication is decategorization. The term inclusion, going back to its Latin origin of inclusio or includere is bound to the existence of its antonym exclusion. Despite endeavors nowdays to reverse the term’s meaning from reclusion to all-embracing,7 efforts to establish inclusion would not be necessary without exclusionary preconditions. On a terminological level, the expression inclusion implicates that there is an existing dualism between an inclusive or enclosed in-group and an exclusive or excluded out-group. This close and inextricable linkage between the existence of inclusion and exclusion, shows the importance of Merkt’s endeavor of highlighting efforts and development of decategorization, both on a terminological and legislative level, as well as on the ideological level. She is portraying concepts of thinking and acting in view of disability as a recurring process of progression and regression in reference to exclusionary... (shrink)

We discuss approaches to the study of the evolution of music (sect. R1); challenges to each of the two theories of the origins of music presented in the companion target articles (sect. R2); future directions for testing them (sect. R3); and priorities for better understanding the nature of music (sect. R4).