Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music

Abstract

Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music by Steven Jan is a comprehensive account of the relationships between evolutionary theory and music. Examining the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ that drives biological and musical-cultural evolution, the book provides a distinctive commentary on how musicality and music can shed light on our understanding of Darwin’s famous theory, and vice-versa. Comprised of seven chapters, with several musical examples, figures and definitions of terms, this original and accessible book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the relationships between music and evolutionary thought. Jan guides the reader through key evolutionary ideas and the development of human musicality, before exploring cultural evolution, evolutionary ideas in musical scholarship, animal vocalisations, music generated through technology, and the nature of consciousness as an evolutionary phenomenon. A unique examination of how evolutionary thought intersects with music, Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music is essential to our understanding of how and why music arose in our species and why it is such a significant presence in our lives.

Song and dance: a memetic angle on the evolution of musicality and music via case studies of a musemeplex in Saint-Saëns and ABBA

“…If valid [and some studies have supported it (Jan, 2022 , p. 257–258)], it is not difficult to see how the specific types of imitation considered in this article—those facilitating the vocalisations underpinning the singing style and the rhythmicisations underpinning the brilliant style—could have been supercharged by memetic drive. The account offered here therefore opens up insights only a dual-replicator perspective can afford: music is seen as changing (but also to some extent staying the same, as MC and TWTIA indicate) through X-eme-driven cultural evolution in a way that is constrained by the gene-shaped capacities—for singing and for dancing—underpinning musicality.…”

“…In notated form, musemes generally align with Miller's ( 1956 ) range of 5–9 elements (notes), the lower end (and sometimes below 5) conforming to Cope's ( 2003 ) commonalities, the upper (and sometimes above 9) to his quotations. At the risk of conceptual inflation, one might also say that lexemes and sonemes are similar to musemes, except that the former constitute the sound-patterns of language, and thus privilege the syntactic and semantic over the phonetic (Jan, 2022 , p. 10, note 6); while the latter constitute the sound-patterns of animal vocalisations and thus, in perhaps most species, privilege the phonetic and semantic over the syntactic (Jan, 2022 , p. 393). Gestemes —replicated patterns of gestures (Jan, 2022 , p. 197)—have a syntactic and semantic, but not a phonetic component; while graphemes —replicated patterns of written symbols (Jan, 2022 , p. 91)—echo this but in two, not three, dimensions, and leave a material trace on paper or in other media.…”

“…Moreover, the phemotypic products of musemes, such as scores and performances, rely upon gestemes to mediate the necessary physical movements that inscribe (notate) the grapheme-phemotypes that in turn describe and prescribe structure and performative actions. Another category of movement-replicator, choreoemes (Jan, 2022 , p. 108), perhaps best understood as a sub-category of gestemes, are coordinated sequences of movements that possess the capacity to be understood as choreographic, and thus as potentially artistic and communicative. Yet choreoemes are also likely to be evolutionarily very ancient, given the importance, discussed below, of coordinated social dance to early hominin survival.…”

“…In Schenkerian terms, reduction of foreground details reveals a (shallow-) middleground structure beneath. This structure—what might be termed a musemesatz (Jan, 2022 , p. 203)—is common to two or more musemeplexes, whether they replicate the same collection of musemes (a “real” musemeplex), or whether one or more of the musemes in the antecedent musemeplex is replaced by one of its alleles in the consequent musemeplex (a “virtual” musemeplex) (Jan, 2022 , p. 202–203). As indicated in Section 4.1, by a museme allele is meant—by analogy with a gene allele—a rival or alternative form of a museme, such that members of a given museme allele-class have sufficient structural and functional similarity that they can occupy a given locus —a linear-sequential “slot”—in a musemeplex (Jan, 2010 ).…”

“…Such a possibility has been theorized in Blackmore's ( 1999 , p. 76–80; 2000 , p. 31–33; 2001 , p. 243–245) “memetic drive” model, whereby memes push genes toward the increased encephalisation necessary for their imitation and storage. I give a full overview in Jan ( 2022 , p. 253–258) but Blackmore's process can be summarized, after that overview, as follows. Note that references to memes below potentially encompass all the categories of cultural replicator outlined in the final paragraph of Section 2.…”