Resumo de The Origin Of Music - WALLIN, MERKER, BROWN

The Origins of Music brings together papers on
subjects ranging from birdsong to neurobiology to fossil flutes to musical
universals. Music rarely gets even a passing mention in work on human
evolution, while evolutionary approaches in musicology are even rarer, so such
a volume offers challenges to both musicologists and paleoanthropologists.
Indeed the editors hope to see the start of an evolutionary musicology, a sub
field of biomusicology devoted to the analysis of music evolution, both
its biological and cultural forms ? and The Origins of Music
deserves wide interdisciplinary attention.

After an introduction to evolutionary musicology by the editors, the other
papers are grouped into four sections. The first focuses on vocal communication
in animals. General papers by Simha Arom and Peter Marler are followed by
papers on birdsong repertoire (Peter J. B. Slater) and its neural basis (Carol
Whaling), the perception and production of primate vocalizations (Marc D.
Hauser), gibbon songs/duets (Thomas Geissmann), the role of social organization
in primate vocal communications (Maria Ujhelyi), and creativity in the songs of
humpback whales (Katharine Payne).

Any similarity between birdsong and human music is by
analogy, as vocal learning evolved quite differently in the two cases. As there
are around 4,000 species of songbirds with a rich variety of vocal patterning,
the occurrence of some with features also found in our music does not necessarily
imply a deep similarity between the phenomena. (Slater)

The papers in the second section look broadly at music and language in human
evolution. Derek Bickerton suggests some lessons biomusicologists can learn
from the history of language evolution studies. Jean Molino argues
that music and language (and dance, chant, poetry, and pretend play) have at
least in part a common origin. Harry Jerison explores homologies in the
paleoneurology of mammalian and bird brains, but concludes that the
evocative role of music in human experience is directly related to language as
a specifically human adaptation. Dean Falk looks at what the latest
technology reveals about the regions of the brain involved in music and
language. And, in a long paper which I only glanced through, Drago Kunej and
Ivan Turk analyze a possible flute from the Middle Paleolithic.

Because music and language are so neurologically
intertwined, it is hypothesized that they evolved together as brain size
increased during the past two million years in the genus Homo.

The papers in the third section present different
theories for the origin of music. Steven Brown presents a musilanguage model in which music and language evolved from a
common ancestor; Bruce Richman argues that both originated in collective
repetition of formulaic sequences; and Björn Merker suggests that synchronous
chorusing was a key adaptation in human evolution. Geoffrey Miller argues that
music must have originated through sexual selection and Peter Todd looks at
simulation of coevolution between

male song producers and female song critics. In contrast, Ellen
Dissanayake suggests music needs to be considered as part of the temporal
arts more broadly and that the key to their evolution lies in
interactions between mothers and infants under six months of age. And Walter
Freeman ranges from neurobiology and brain chemistry, through altered states of
consciousness, to cooperative action and links between music and politics.

I took random samples of... jazz albums... rock albums...
and classical music works... ales produced ten times as much music as
females, and their musical output peaked in young adulthood, around age thirty,
near the time of peak mating effort... that music evolved and
continues to function as a courtship display, mostly broadcast by young males
to attract females. (Miller)

t is in the evolution of affiliative interactions between
mothers and infants ? not male competition and adult courtship ? that we can
discover the origins of the competencies and sensitivities that gave rise to
human music. (Dissanayake)

Four papers at the end are grouped in a section Musical
Universals. Sandra Trehub looks at human predispositions for processing
music and Michel Imberty connects the generative theory of tonal music with
innate competencies, while Bruno Nettl presents an ethnomusicologist''s
perspective on universals and François-Bernard Mâche that of a composer.

I can only say, as a composer, that Craticus
nigrogularis, the pied butcher bird, is a kind of colleague. (Mâche)

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