eclectica
2003-09-18, 16:48
We Got Rhythm; the Mystery Is How and Why (http://www.tatom.org/documents/NY Times article 2003-09-16 - music.htm)
excerpts:
In lovers' songs, military marches, weddings and funerals — every occasion where a degree of emotion needs to be evoked — music is an indispensable ingredient.
Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure? Man's faculties for enjoying and producing music, Darwin wrote, "must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."
Music is still a mystery, a tangle of culture and built-in skills that researchers are trying to tease apart. No one really knows why music is found in all cultures, why most known systems of music are based on the octave, why some people have absolute pitch and whether the brain handles music with special neural circuits or with ones developed for other purposes. Recent research, however, has produced a number of theories about the brain and music.
full article (http://www.tatom.org/documents/NY Times article 2003-09-16 - music.htm)
excerpts:
In lovers' songs, military marches, weddings and funerals — every occasion where a degree of emotion needs to be evoked — music is an indispensable ingredient.
Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure? Man's faculties for enjoying and producing music, Darwin wrote, "must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed."
Music is still a mystery, a tangle of culture and built-in skills that researchers are trying to tease apart. No one really knows why music is found in all cultures, why most known systems of music are based on the octave, why some people have absolute pitch and whether the brain handles music with special neural circuits or with ones developed for other purposes. Recent research, however, has produced a number of theories about the brain and music.
full article (http://www.tatom.org/documents/NY Times article 2003-09-16 - music.htm)