Five fundamental constraints on theories of the origins of music

Abstract

One contribution of 12 to a theme issue 'Biology, cognition and origins of musicality'. The diverse forms and functions of human music place obstacles in the way of an evolutionary reconstruction of its origins. In the absence of any obvious homologues of human music among our closest primate relatives, theorizing about its origins, in order to make progress, needs constraints from the nature of music, the capacities it engages, and the contexts in which it occurs. Here we propose and examine five fundamental constraints that bear on theories of how music and some of its features may have originated. First, cultural transmission, bringing the formal powers of cultural as contrasted with Darwinian evolution to bear on its contents. Second, generativity, i.e. the fact that music generates infinite pattern diversity by finite means. Third, vocal production learning, without which there can be no human singing. Fourth, entrainment with perfect synchrony, without which there is neither rhythmic ensemble music nor rhythmic dancing to music. And fifth, the universal propensity of humans to gather occasionally to sing and dance together in a group, which suggests a motivational basis endemic to our biology. We end by considering the evolutionary context within which these constraints had to be met in the genesis of human musicality.

Consonance Processing in the Absence of Relevant Experience: Evidence from Nonhuman Animals

“…It is thus important to explore the role of vocal production in consonance perception. Producing complex vocalizations has been considered a constraint for the structure of music (Merker, Morley, & Zuidema, 2015). Thus, testing species with no vocal learning abilities could shed light on whether consonance perception is affected by production.…”

“…Although vocal production has been considered as an important constraint for the structure of music in general (Merker et al, 2015), few studies have been devoted to determining which features of music might be affected by this capacity (but see Bowling, Sundararajan, Han, & Purves, 2012;Gill & Purves, 2009;Juslin & Laukka, perceiving harmonic sounds plays during the creation of categories around stimuli that vary in frequency ratios that would allow for proper generalization across octaves. As has been shown by Bregman, Patel, and Gentner (2016), birds (European starlings) rely on acoustic cues other than absolute pitch to generalize to novel stimuli.…”

Seven Theses on the Biology of Music and Language

“…hat transformative work takes place unbeknownst to the learners, without active agency on their part, as a glacially slow transgenerational efect of their limited learning capacity, a process sustained by the display function of song, free of the necessity to communicate meaning. Further aspects of this process are briely touched upon in the annotations to heses 3, 4, and 5, and in Merker et al 2015. hesis 3: Paths and precursors here is no natural path from the semantics of animal calls to the syntax of human language, but there is a natural path from the syntax of learned animal song to the semantics of human language (Merker 2012). hus, our path to language must have traversed a stage of learned, unsemanticized, and complex song.…”

Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality

“…To avoid 'just-so stories' for the evolution of music, Merker et al [67] argue for constraints on evolutionary theorizing. They propose five such constraints, chosen for their generality and their consequences for the structure of music: (i) cultural transmission, so that any transfer of musical traits must pass through an inter-generational 'learner bottleneck'; (ii) generativity, such that music can generate infinite pattern diversity by finite means; (iii) vocal production learning; (iv) entrainment with perfect synchrony; and (v) a motivational basis for the universal human propensity to sing and dance together in a group.…”