Evolution of music
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ICMPC Day Two – Evolution
The evolution symposium was put together by Ani Patel, and included some of the most fascinating and cutting age papers from the field of “biomusicology”. In general biomusicologists are not interested in studying any particular style of music, but rather in the human capacity for music itself and in better understanding the biological basis that is shared among all musics. 1) First up was Professor Techumseh Fitch, one of my favourite speakers I have to admit. He started off with a really engaging introduction to the field which must have been brilliant for all the students for whom this may have been completely new territory. He talked about the development…
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The emotional origins of music
I have just been sent an alert to tell me that the new ‘Musicae Scientiae’ journal is a Special Issue – Music and Evolution Special Issue 2009-2010 (ISSN 1029-8649), edited by the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM). http://musicweb.hmt-hannover.de/escom I am looking forward to getting my copy and diving into all the newest theories on the origins of music! In the meantime, and while brushing up on the literature in this area, I came across a nice little summary article by Laurel Trainor. In it Laurel summarises theories for an emotional ‘trigger’ being important in the evolution of music – specifically, that the emotions induced by music…