Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA18449 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 5 Jan 2001 14:11:52 GMT Subject: Fwd: Ancient note: music as bridge between species Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 09:07:30 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: <skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu>, "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <20010105140647.AAA21756@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Ancient note: music as bridge between species
By David L. Chandler, Globe Staff, 1/5/2001
It has long been a cliche that music is universal, but now science is
proving just how deeply true the old saying really is.
While scientists can't do much better than the rest of us in defining
exactly what music is - although they know it when they hear it - they
have shown that human appreciation of music is remarkably ancient, begins
astonishingly early in life, and to a surprising extent may be shared by
whales, birds, and even rats.
In a pair of articles appearing today in the journal Science, several
scientists show that musical appreciation is so deep-seated that it may
be one of humanity's oldest activities, and that in fundamental ways it
even crosses the lines of species. Through such research, they hope, they
may come to understand the human mind better, perhaps even learning
important clues about how to overcome damage to the auditory system.
''We became human at the point where we started making music,'' Jelle
Atema, a biologist with Boston University's program at the Marine
Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and co-author of one of the Science
papers, said in an interview yesterday. But, Atema admits, many animals
also produce sounds in ways that, to human ears, meet virtually any
definition of music.
Atema, like several of the researchers involved in the Science papers,
straddles the fields of music and science: In addition to his work in
biology, he plays the flute and even studied under the renowned flutist
Jean-Pierre Rampal. He has painstakingly made exact copies of ancient
bone flutes in order to play them and determine the kinds of sounds that
our distant ancestors may have been making around their campfires.
Another of the researchers, Harvard Medical School's Mark Jude Tramo, is
a guitarist who was selected to play at a world's fair at the age of 8
and is a member of the performing rights organization ASCAP, the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
''Do musical sounds in nature reveal a profound bond between all living
things?'' asks one of the articles. And the evidence that it may is broad
and very specific. For example:
The ''songs'' of humpback whales follow many of the same, precise rules
that are nearly universal in human music, including the nature of the
tonal scale, the way themes are introduced and varied, the use of
percussive as well as melodic sounds, and the structures of rhythms and
phrasing.
Many species of birds also sing in ways that mimic very closely the rules
of human song, including the ways that songs are passed from one
generation to another or are shared by a group of peers. Many use note
scales similar to those devised by humans, even though an infinite
variety of such scales is possible: The canyon wren uses the chromatic
scale, while the hermit thrush uses a pentatonic scale. Some even make
instruments and play them; the palm cockatoo of Australia, for instance,
carefully shapes a drumstick from a twig and holds it in its foot to play
on a hollow log.
Music goes back to the earliest ages of human prehistory, and
sophisticated flutes have been found that date back as much as 53,000
years. The technology used to make these ancient instruments was much
more advanced, Atema says, than that used at the same period to produce
utilitarian tools like spearpoints and scrapers. ''To see that they spent
so much time [making instruments] means music was important to them,'' he
says. Music, some scientists speculate, may even predate language.
Tramo, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General
Hospital, says he is fascinated by the complexity of the human brain's
response to music. ''There is no `music center' in the brain,'' he wrote.
Nearly every cognitive part of the brain is involved in listening to
music, and when we move to the music many of the motor areas are involved
as well. ''Imagine how much of the brain lights up when we dance!''
But his research on just how the brain processes the sounds of music is
much more than just an abstract question or a way of melding his medical
and artistic sides. He sees it as a process that can lead to fundamental
and important insights.
''The experiences we naturally have in our culture, in the arts, teach us
a lot about how the brain works,'' Tramo said in an interview yesterday.
''The next step, in the next few decades, is going to be to bridge that
gap between the arts and the sciences.''
By learning exactly how the brain processes and decodes the complex mix
of tones, rhythms, timbre, and melodic progression that make up music, a
more comprehensive understanding of how the brain makes sense of the
world around us may emerge. In the same way, other scientists are using
responses to visual arts as a way of probing the workings of the human
visual system.
''We really want to understand basic sensory physiology,'' Tramo said.
''That understanding in time is going to help scientists in their efforts
to help the deaf to hear, and help the blind to see.''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 1/5/2001. © Copyright
2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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