Chapter 2 -- The Origins of Music

Listen to a few minutes of a performance of the Beethoven's 6th Symphony. What you will hear is arguably one of the pinnacles of the Western musical tradition. In not just themusic, but the execution of it—the performance—there is an incredibly rich history of refined musical practices that encapsulates the development of Western thought itself.

It is performed on the most highly engineered and crafted acoustic instruments in humanhistory. It is a series of carefully constructed melodies and harmonies that deliberately and logically unfold over a period of time in an overall structure that has been hammered out into a tight dramatic piece. It is a logical—if sometimes surprising—flow of musical events from the first note to the last.

It is performed by highly skilled and highly educated musicians who are deeply immersed in their craft and its traditions that go back centuries.

It is performed in an architectural structure that has been the subject of a great deal of scientific testing and research to channel the sound as efficiently as possible to where one instrument can be heard—without amplification—by several thousand people.

Illustration 1: Did some of the earliest music come fromhumans imitating bird songs? Better yet, do they fall into the

bounds of “music”?

Next, listen to a rock concert, with its massive banks of amplifiers; its highly coordinated light show; make note of the music from synthesizers using the latest computer technology.

In spite of the nearly 200 year gap between them, you will see many of the same things you might in the Beethoven Symphony.

Each one is a remarkable example of sophistication. Each brings with it its own story of a long, complex history that brought it to this point.

While each has its own radical elements, neither of them has reinvented the musical wheel. Each one is the top rung of a high ladder, each step built on tremendous innovations of the previous one.

If you look way, way down to the bottom of that ladder, what was the very first step like?

The first humans to create music were doing so on a much simpler scale than the orchestra or rock band, but there are very strong connections between the two.

While the exact details of the beginnings of music are lost in distant prehistoric times, we can make educated guesses as to how it began, or at the very least, why it began.

WHAT IS MUSIC?

This text asks the question, “What is Music?” numerous times. For right now, let's fill in that definition with a somewhat traditional definition: “Music is organized non-speech sound.” That's a very broad definition, but it covers pretty much everything most peoplewould consider to be music as well as what most composers would intend to be perceived as music.

So, then. . . animals certainly can make organized non-speech sounds that communicate quite clearly. Does that mean that they make musical sounds?

No. . . and yes—and this is where we begin to see some differences, courtesy of the human consciousness.

Let's take birdsongs as an example. They have organization--probably more to birds thanthey do to us, but nevertheless they have pitch and rhythms that work for us. Many of them can be notated on a musical staff. In addition, they communicate information. So,

are bird songs music?

Bird songs are probably not music to birds, they can easily be music to usi.The Beethoven 6thSymphony mentioned at the beginning of this section contains passages where orchestral instruments imitate birds songs, the gentle flowing of a stream, and the loud thunder of a thunderstorm.

There are three things that distinguish the Beethoven from the birds; 1)symbolism—the music of the Beethoven symphony would be easy to tell from the real birdsongs, but instead is more or less a symbolic representation of them, 2)deliberate and premeditated intent—the bird's voices are more or less spontaneous, and 3)tradition—as noted above, a large set of “baggage” surrounds the Beethoven. We are not hearing the music in a vacuum, but in a very well defined context.

Similarly, speech is distinguishable from animal sounds by the above three characteristics.

German linguist H. Gipper sums up the differences between animal sounds and speech in that that animal sounds are a medium of communication while speech is a medium of knowledge. Speech communicates an extra level of information that is based on our brain's ability to deal with words as symbols for abstract and concrete items.

As beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, music is in the ear of the beholder, and it would not be going too far to say that organization is in the brain of the beholder.

That sense of organization—maybe even our obsessive need for organization in the human brain—is our admission into the homo sapiens clubii.

THE ROOTS OF MUSIC IN SPEECH

Speech and music are very closely related in both the characteristics of what they communicate, how they communicate, and how the brain perceives, analyzes, and storeswhat it is fed.

Let's take a deeper look at our mode of communicating with sound.

Speech communicates on two levels. One level consists of the exact words that constitute detailed semantic meanings. The phrase, “It's so good to see you,” conveys a certain set of information. There are at least two people involved in the conversation,

they both apparently understand English, they have been separated (or possibly this was spoken as they were introduced), and so on.

The level other is a series of pitches and rhythmic elements that convey quite a bit of information, sometimes more than the actual language.

“It's so good to see you,” can be also be said with a large number of different inflections. It can be spoken normally, excitedly, sarcastically, ironically, sadly, or even as a question—and the same set of words will take on completely different meanings.

Illustration 2: Cetaceans such as this Belugawhale seem to have a language and a very

complex system of communication (some Belugashave even spontaneously imitated human speech!).

Is it language? Music? Somewhere in between?

Or something completely new?

Many animals are able to communicate on this same basic level. Here is a (hopefully) hypothetical example. If you nicely pet a dog and soothingly say, “You're a worthless fleabag and I'm going to get a big stick and beat you,” the dog will likely wag its tail appreciatively. On the other hand if you yell at the top of your lungs, “You're such a nicedog and I'm going to give you a nice juicy steak!”, you will terrify the dog.The words spoken in the above paragraph—again, hopefully a hypothetical situation—are unimportant as communication. The pitches, rhythms, and dynamics in the speech doall of the talking.

Or imagine speaking the above to a person who didn't understand English. You will communicate very clearly with him. . . just not through the words.

This is very deeply ingrained in us on a level deeper than conscious thought. Even by the age of six months—well before speech patterns begin to sink in and be repeated, babies are experts in communicating. Crying can convey fear, hunger, discomfort, etc. but babies also quickly learn to communicate a number of other sounds that convey more pleasant emotions. They can also easily discern different emotions conveyed in thevoices of adults speaking to them.

In other words, what we're talking about is the fact that speech contains a layer of music,or at least very close to it.

These expressive elements of music in our normal speech are equally integral parts of our normal music. A composer creating a melody for a symphony, a radio commercial, or a film soundtrack will make use of musical elements that strongly resemble the sounds made by someone speaking. It's not difficult to find music with a melody that closely resembles someone crying (for example, the wailing melodies of blues/jazz), a shriek of fear (the sudden dissonant chord in the soundtrack of a horror film), or the boisterous defiance of a victor in battle (try the theme music for a major sports event).

As noted above, these basic musical elements of speech transcend language barriers, andin a number of cases, species barriers.

One notable example of researcher into how deep this goes comes from Dr. Manfred Clynes from Australia. In an episode of PBS's Nova entitled, “What is Music?”, Clynes described one of his experiments. Clynes asked volunteers to touch a pressure sensitive button to try to convey one of seven emotions such as fear, excitement, anger, etc. He found that there were some fairly universal patterns present across numerous subjects.

He then taught the motions to another set of volunteers and asked them to associate those motions with the original seven emotions. His subjects were able to do that accurately.

Clynes then took the graphs of those emotions and converted them into sound. He played those to more volunteers who were able to accurately match the sound with its corresponding emotion. This list of volunteers included Australian Aborigines who didn't have the same set of cultural influences that the urban, educated volunteers did. The reactions of the two sets of people were identical.

Clynes was able to discover a direct link between motion, emotion, and sound.

Illustration 3: As seen earlier in this text, the fourth movement of theBeethoven 5th symphony contains rising, defiant melodies. The

music very much reflects that character.

Illustration 4: The opening of the 6th symphony by Tchaikovskysounds tragic—almost like one large sigh—and we see a

relationship that fits Dr. Clynes experiments.

Again, the musical layer of speech often conveys more information than the spoken words.

Each side has its strengths and weaknesses. It is often difficult to decipher exact emotions with printed text, a trait probably directly related to the creation of emoticons :-)

Music is a miserable medium at carrying subtleties and details. It excels at conveying raw unfiltered emotions. It does this so well that most people aren't aware of it happening. Many of music's most powerful effects are on a subliminal level.

THE ROOTS OF MUSIC IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

Perhaps one of the best words in the English language that sums up the effects of the “music in our speech” as well as music in general is subliminal (from the Latin “below threshold”). Much of music's effects (as well as speech) operate below the threshold of consciousness, but certainly get their message through).

People who use music to manipulate others go to great lengths to make sure that music is heard if not necessarily listened to.

Commercials, film and television soundtracks, even background music heard in stores is carefully chosen and crafted to convey certain moods and messages.

Is this a sign, then, that music goes far deeper into the human brain than we usually think?

Neurologist Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, Musicophilia, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, etc.), would may have agreed. In an interview in Neurology Today, Sacks discussed a number of his experiments playing music for patients with brain damage dueto Alzheimer's Disease and other injuries. Sacks' research shows that music—with its organization and the emotions it portrays reaches deeply into memory and can temporarily restore memories lost to the neurological damage.

One can listen to a song sung in another language and still understand the meaning the composer put into it.

This writer has performed music in numerous nursing homes, often to an audience with members in deep dementia, and has observed numerous times the astonishment of the staff when a normally unresponsive patient begins smiling, looking more alert, even singing along.

What this suggests is that music communicates on a deeper, more basic, and dare we sayit--universaliii--level than speech.

Like the earlier example of the speaking to a dog, with many songs, the words are unimportant. The music is powerful enough to convey most of the message by itself.

The next time you listen to your favorite music, step back and analyze—how important are the words? If you took only the lyrics and treated them as poetry, what impact wouldthey have? Would it be different from how you hear the whole song?

And, let's take this a step further: listen to a particularly inspiring politician's speech (andthen examine a transcript if you can find one). What does the music in his speech communicate and add to (or perhaps overpower) the simple words he is speaking? Great actors are masters of the craft of music in their speech. So are political talk show hosts, clergy, trial lawyers, and—hopefully—a great teacher or two you will experience in yourlifetime.

Importantly, this may be able to give us a little better understanding into the origins of music. Again, we are digging far back into prehistory, but this may suggest that speech and music have very similar origins and similar functions.

We may never know which came first—music or speech—but regardless of which gelled first, they couldn't have been that far apart. Ever since that beginning, music has been an essential partner of speech.

Far more research needs to be done, but there are indications that music communicates on a deeper, more elemental, more basic level than speech. Music is like a shortcut that directly goes to the emotions. Or, as Beethoven once wrote on one of his compositions, “From the heart, may it go to the heart.”

Perhaps this is a strong indication that when human speech finally saw the light of day, music had been around for a long time. It is one of the things that makes us uniquely human.

DO WE NEED TO ASK “WHAT IS A HUMAN?”

At this point, a little side trip is in order.

Without doubt, the fact that we have music may well be one of the things that define us as human. Many other species have communication via sound that is critical to their survival, but none has developed anything as sophisticated as music or one that contains nearly as much information. And—as far as we know—it is only humans that have developed a means to deliberately preserve the essences of these sounds long after their creator has diediv.

That desire, the means, and the ability to preserve music (and other things) is a trait that also distinguishes us from other living species and makes us distinctively human.

We need to stop here and define what it means to be human. Music is so deeply rooted inus that in order to best comprehend what music is, we need to understand our selves first.

According to the latest understanding, the characteristics of what is considered to be “modern human behavior” became fully formed about 50,000 years ago. This list includes the ability to plan ahead; establishment of social networks and group identity; understanding symbols and the participation in symbolic behavior (such as rituals), and a grasp of the abstract.

As noted earlier, the Beethoven Symphony, as well as the vast majority of all Western Music, contains these characteristics.

There is an amazing amount of variety among the human settlers of this planet. We see this when we look at its extreme range—from north to south, from primitive to highly industrialized, from mountaintop to desert, and as far back as we can go into history (or let our archaeologists take us back into pre-history).

However, there are certain common threads that link every member of the homo sapiensclub together.

We have certain basic needs.

That list includes warmth, food, shelter, companionship. We have a strong mating instinct that drives us and our culture in many ways.

We have needs for security.

We also have needs to protect and nurture our offspring,v and we go to great lengths to comfort and insure the safety of our descendants.

Some more highly developed functions include a need to understand. We have an innate curiosity, an inborn quest to dissemble, to understand things that happen to us—or at least to come up with an explanation that fits the surroundings and knowledge at the timevi.

We need challenges to force us to explore because we have a roaming streak in our gene pool. Mold us so that we need to be confined, limited, and have no curiosity, and we have lost the essence of what it means to be human.

We also have a strong innate need for order and regularity. We thrive better when the world around us operates in regular patterns. Few other things give a better glimpse of

this trait than our music.

We also have a need to remember. And likewise, few other things give a better glimpse of this trait than our music.

We have needs—and the means—to communicate through the medium of soundvii.

The practices and perceptions of music are heavily intertwined with the things that define us as being different from the animals.

Music: also known as one of the humanities.

Illustration 5: A kiva used for Native American religious ceremonies inNew Mexico. Music and religion have gone hand in hand since the

earliest times.

i As in the Beethoven 6th Symphony, the third piano concerto of Bartok, Blackbird by The Beatles, etc.

ii Organization is so much a part of our consciousness that we often hear order when it may not there; experiments with randomly generated music bear out this conclusion—many people will “detect” something musical.

iii When countries in conflict make their first attempts at dialogue, they often do it with music.

iv The word “deliberate” is an essential distinction here; it is probable that coyotes howling at night in the year 2008 would sound pretty similar to coyotes in the year 1008. Bird songs of individual birdsremain the same from generation to generation. Is this hardwired into their brains or something passed along through different generations? Work by W. Thorpe in 1954 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_song) suggests a little of both might be at play.

v One of the things that differentiates primates in general and homo sapiens in particular is that our helpless infant stage and its period of brain development lasts much longer than other species. Contrast our family environment where our children are basically under our control until age 18 (the brain is not finished developing even then even after we have the ability to create children) with reptiles where the babies are on their own pretty much from birth.

vi Recalling British historian James Burke, author of The Day the Universe Changed, those explanations change when our knowledge changes—not surprisingly, so does our definition of music at the time.

vii Verbal speech requires two critical things—a certain level of brain function to be able to distinguishsounds (dogs and cats for example can quickly recognize certain words), as well as handle the concept of concepts and symbolism AND the physical structures to create these sounds, such as a developed larynx, tongue, etc. Which came first? Which is more important? Fascinating experiments have been done with animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and parrots that show that the intellectual elements of speech (and maybe eventually even music) may not be limited to humans. And then, there are numerous researchers who believe that if we ever crack the code of dolphin language, we may be stunned by what we hear. . .

Material copyright 2016 by Gary Daum, all rights reserved. All photos and illustrations by Gary Daum unless otherwise

noted. Unlimited use granted to current members of the Georgetown Prep community.