in the shell

An area of interest that I have had for some time yet never explored to a greater extent is the origin of music. Now, I am not talking about the cultural or historical origins of music but rather how it works.
Forget about scales, time signatures and notes. What I thing is of interest is the higher (or lower depending on how you see it) aspects of music. Its origins in our minds, how it leads us to experience the things we do experience when listening to music. Because obviously the experience is not an inherent part of music, as different minds tend to interpret it differently.
Theoretically, to successfully explore this objectively we would probably have to explore consciousness, but in my opinion no one here is really at that level.
I value highly my integrity of information so I would find it to the benefit of all if you specify your sources (subjective experiences, reasoning or perhaps literature).
So, since this is pretty much unknown to me, I wonder if anyone has some experience of this subject.

Well I don't really have much experience outside of a passive interest and attending a lecture on the topic at a philosophy conference (Geek! ), but that chap was just using the whole thing to try to back up his halfassed collective unconciousness concepts.. jerk

The development of a concept of music in the minds of prehistoric(preliterate) humans most certainly emerged in an environment of natural sounds and animal calls. It’s possible that the ability to recognize sounds not created by humans as being “music” provides a evolutionary selective advantage in identifying entities within your environment or possibly music has roots in getting an emotional response from various prelinguistic grunts/alarm calls. Those are the only two suggestions in my old class notes... evolutionary psychology seems to have a lot more to say on the origins of language than it does on the origins of it’s poorer cousin, music.

I am of course making a fairly large assumption in saying that music would have predated written word, but I think it’s a safe assumption. The oldest song in the world dates to about 3400 years old (written on a cuneiform slab unearthed on a dig in Ras Shamra), any population at any time has had music in some form, there's an innate appreciation of rythem, tonality and harmony suggested by recent child psychology studies and...

...as rude as it is, i'm going to have to go mid-post. As 1) I'm meant to be working and the deadline beast approaches, 2) It's about 3:00 am and 3) this post is getting stupidly garbled due to the combined mind-draining effects of '1' and '2' I've got a copy of this book in one of my book storage crates(shelves too full), i'll have a read and see if someone better informed has anything useful to say in it when i'm fully awake.

Music is so elemental to the human experience I would say...the beat of which we go by. I met this one lady who specialized in music therapy...I guess she was on Oprah before..it was just soooooo interesting how even fetuses in the womb respond to music. Anyway.

I think music is one of the first forms of entertainment, used in many ways including, rituals and such. The first instraments where vary primitive consisting of bones and lether. It is only in the last few thoughsand years that music has become a real influence

heh, I never found that particular book BTW I sowwy

In my opinion it's probably evolved biologically as a social mechanism parallell to linguistics. The human animal is supposedly unique in making culture and art(music in this case), this human animal "lives by being prepared constantly to reinvent itself and the conditions of its existence. For such an animal, music, like the arts in general, would be a crucial device to maintain the necesary(my spelling is crap, stay in school kids) perceptual acuity, world-making flexibility, and range of emotive resource.*" 'Elmo's theory of musical origin' states that the origin of music can be rooted in the sounds which animals and humans have used in response to events around them. Thus, vocal music is thought of in terms of an extension of the naturally evolved form of voice as a linguistic system, with cognitive intellectual and linguistic function amalgam in it's use. The sounds animals make evoke attitudes, emotions and responses; but we have the added advantage as humans, of the capacity to modulate our speech by linguistic means subjective to understanding. This awareness of linguistic meaning can be expected to influence all uses of voice and thus we develop musical appreiciation.(and by extension, of instrumental music.(Did vocal music develop first?))

But there are a couple of intresting philosophical alternate schools of thought on the subject that suggest that it's a cultural development that has occured unviersally because of a link to the way our minds experience emotion. The most prevelant of these is the Cognitivist theory that says that the experience/interpretation a piece of music engenders is a result of a conscious process of inference. Implict in this line of thought is the idea that music has expressive properties that the listener's mind recognizes (.see Peter Kivy, Music Alone(Peter Kivy is representative of this viewpoint but he's not by any stretch an extremist, he repeatedly states that we are also moved by the way music captures feeling interpreted through a filter of our listening experience(musical and worldly). Thus our culturally learnt listening experience suppresses or facilitates the inherent tendency of music to evoke the corrisponding emotional state(It's probably important to make clear that it's not that we are 'angry' at an 'angry' piece of music , nor are we angry about it; we merely indentify heard qualities of the music). One theory for example is that the form of music bears close resemblance to the vocal expressions or bodily movements experienced when emotions or thoughts similar to those interpreted through the music are aroused. If for instance someone is in an agitated or restless emotional state, then their behaviour is liable to be agitated or restlessly; and if they do then they will make agitated or restless movements. Prehaps the type of music the form of which can be described as agitated or restless stimulates the mind in the same way that a agitated or restless emotinal state would(see Malcolm Buss, Music and the Emotions). One good problem with this if you are seeking to poke holes in other peoples ideas (and why not? it's very entertaining ), is that when taken to an extreme some people argue that all human minds are biologically disposed to react to a piece of music the same way. Clearly this is not nessecerililly(I can't spell that word, ever. ) so, especially if you take cultural differences into consideration.(I could proove this last point if anyone here is willing to fund my expedition around the world playing music to various cultures.. most likely all the cultures on nice hot sandy beaches, no takers? ..it was worth a shot )

*Sparshott

Sources for this post include, “Elmo’s old Philosophy notes, vol II”, “my mate Ben”, “Elmo’s diseased mind”

Theoretically, to successfully explore this objectively we would probably have to explore consciousness, but in my opinion no one here is really at that level.

That's kind of... rude. Incuding yourself?

Did cave men hum? The voice, tongue and hands were the first musical intruments. A lot of toddlers like to make that clicking sound with their tongue. I remember doing it and annoying everyone... The sound and the delight that you were the one making it and sustaining it made it quite an enjoyable activity. At least, I think that's why I didn't want to stop. 3 year olds...

Well, I suppose I don't add much to the conversation.

Sylphisonic wrote:Well, I suppose I don't add much to the conversation.

Oh I don't know, humming cavemen is the cutest mental image I've had in a while.