The mystery of music
Punk, Classical, Rock. Music of all types plays a key role in human culture and has done so for a really long time. But what is it that makes music so universally important? Does the new scientific field of biomusicology have the answers?
Music can have a powerful emotional effect (Source: iStockphoto)
In the early years of the 17th century Gregorio Allegri wrote a piece of sacred music to be performed just twice during the Easter week every year. His composition was thought to be so beautiful it was only to be performed for a select audience by the Sistine Chapel Choir, and any person who made a copy of the piece was to be punished by excommunication from the Church.
More than 130 years after its composition, legend has it, a twelve-year-old boy went with his father to the Vatican to hear the Allegri piece performed. At home after the performance, and having heard it only once, the boy picked up quill and paper and wrote down from memory the musical notation of the secret work.
The piece, the Miserere, is more than eleven minutes in length.
The young boy who performed this astounding feat of musical memory was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, perhaps the most outrageously gifted composer in the Western pantheon.
Mozart's musical gifts were rare, if not unique, but in many important ways his talents clearly mark him out as one of us, because the capacity to appreciate and make music is a universal human trait. Indeed there is powerful evidence to suggest that Mozart's skills are shared to a degree by many species. Perhaps no humpback whale is ever likely to breach the Pope's copyright, but it is possible that any of them may appreciate the music of the Sistine Chapel Choir.
Whether it's Mozart, or the songs of humpback whales, or something from the Hottest 100, there is no question that music has a powerful allure. But the question of why we enjoy music is one that is proving difficult to answer, despite being asked by a great diversity of scientists and thinkers.
In recent years the study of music in its biological context has gained popularity, and a great deal of research is contributing to the new discipline of biomusicology. In this field, researchers are looking at human and non-human musical behaviour to try to find out what role it plays, and why it exists at all. The answers to these and related questions are likely to offer important insights into the evolution of our species.
Old bones and older music
Spend five minutes in a shopping mall and it will be quite clear that music has an important place in modern western society. Mobile phones play television theme songs, portable music machines store hundreds of songs for young shoppers, and then there is the muzak. But what about our forebears? Would a Cro-Magnon shopper get it? Just when in our history we started to enjoy music is a question of central importance to biomusicologists.
Evidence for ancient musical abilities is being sought in many fields, from neurological science to behavioural ecology, but it is archaeological research that is producing some of the most striking findings. Over the past few years pieces of what appear to be bone flutes have been found across Europe, the oldest of which was last played 53,000 years ago. Reconstructions of these instruments indicate that, when played like a recorder, they make a very musical tone.
The fact that such sophisticated instruments existed 50,000 years ago suggests that humans had been perfecting their music making skills since long before. With these discoveries, the archaeological evidence tells us that musical enjoyment must have been around at least as long as modern humanity itself.
Musical lizard brain
Some researchers take the next step and say an ear for music goes back much further than Homo sapiens. As evidence they point to neurological studies of the human brain as it responds to music. PET scans of people listening to music have confirmed what many music lovers already know, that music elicits a response in that part of the brain that deals with our emotions.
As a recent issue of Scientific American pointed out, our emotional nerve centre - the limbic system - is an evolutionarily ancient part of our brain, and one which we share with much of the animal kingdom. Our limbic system's response to music suggests that there is a deep evolutionary significance in our musical behaviour. As Patricia Gray, head of the Biomusic program at the National Academy of Sciences in the US suggests, it seems that the roots of human music lie much closer to our "lizard brain" than to our more recent reasoning cortex. She proposes that music has a more ancient origin even than human language.
More evidence for the ancient providence of music comes from the fact that other animals make music, and that it is sometimes very similar to our own. Humpback whales for example sing complicated songs displaying rhythm, rhyme, and a compositional structure that can be found in the pop songs of Kylie Minogue. In other words, they make music that is very like our own, yet humans and whales last shared a twig on the family tree 60 million years ago. Patricia Gray suggests that this makes humans not the inventors of music, but rather latecomers to the party.
Lookin' good with music
For the biomusicologist, the apparent depth of our musical roots raises the question 'why?'. What is it about music that has ensured it a place in our makeup for so long? Many theories exist, but not so many answers.
Some researchers propose that music must have conferred some evolutionary advantage in our distant past. One way it may have done so would be familiar to any university student hosting a party. Music is cool and makes the music provider attractive. According to this theory, the ability to make music is the aural equivalent of the peacock's tail, and perhaps the mobs of groupies following rock stars around the globe are proof enough for this idea.
Another idea is that music conferred an evolutionary advantage by promoting social cohesion among groups. Singing, dancing and banging drums around the campfire may have been a powerful social glue, giving the participants a sense of community. The stronger the bonds, goes the theory, the better the survival rate of members of the group.
Or perhaps music is a mind game designed to train us to think creatively and find patterns in our surroundings. The human skill at pattern recognition, which has clear evolutionary advantages because it helps us understand and make predictions about our world, might have been honed over the years by making and listening to music.
Auditory cheesecake?
While these theories might seem likely enough they are by no means accepted by everyone. Renowned linguist Steven Pinker is sceptical of any theories that place music on an evolutionary pedestal. According to Pinker, music is "auditory cheesecake", by which he means it is a bonus skill we get with our language package. Music is something we do because we can.
Whatever the source of our musical drive, and whether we be Mozart or the bloke who dug his grave, it is clear that music can have a powerful emotional effect on us. A recent article in the science journal Nature describes a study conducted in the U.S. in which volunteers underwent a PET scan while listening to music. The twist in this study was that participants were asked to nominate a song that always had a powerful positive effect on them. The experiment revealed that these types of tunes activate neural pathways associated with highly pleasurable activities such as eating and having sex. The evolutionary imperative linking pleasure with eating or with sex is clear, but the reason for such a strong response to music remains an intriguing mystery.
Planet of the musicians
In millions of years when, far across the galaxy, an alien race encounters a small machine from Earth called either Voyager 1 or Voyager 2, the crafts' ancient science packages, such as cameras and spectrometers, will teach them nothing new about the universe, except that we once existed.
What may be more significant are the recordings of the sounds of Earth, stored on a number of gold-plated copper phonograph records. Along with instructions for their use, these recordings feature natural noises such as waves breaking and thunder rolling, as well as animal noises including the songs of whales. They also contain ninety minutes of 'eclectic music' including western classics and eastern traditional music.
An alien species might have no concept of music, or of its components such as rhythm and melody. To these creatures the sound of humans singing may be an insoluble puzzle, or a revelation, but it is not out of the question that this brief sample of Earthly music reveals more about who we are then anything else on the craft. Perhaps these aliens will refer to us as the people who made music. Given the recent work done by biomusicologists, this description may be quite appropriate.
Published 12 February 2004
