The Evolutionary Approach

to Musical Signication
Marcin Strzelecki
Academy of Music, Krakow
I would like to discuss here one of very interesting branches of
contemporary musicology
which is - to me - a biomusicology
i am trying to collect and classify some of the ideas,
and to make general conclusions
i think that evolutionary approach brings on some consequences into the
eld of general musicology, and may tell us something about general
culture, aesthetics, as well
object
evaluation
life death
general framework of evolutionary cycle
change
at the very abstract level THE EVOLUTION is kind of cycle
this is universal model, very obvious, trivial
it takes roots from the pure phisical world
according to the theory of entropy,
objects of the world are under kind of environmental pression
some objects can change, this is what we call adaptation
some changes are succesful - and give them chance to exist, still, despite the
pression
objects evolve to become better and better adapted to the environment
in biology this basic framework works like this...
population
individual
evaluation
life death
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
general framework of evolutionary cycle
there is a population of individuals
population
environment
individual
tness
life death
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
general framework of evolutionary cycle
the environment provides criteria for the evaluation
each individual have a property,
which is a level of environmental ttness
population
environment
individual
tness
replication no replication
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
general framework of evolutionary cycle
the higher tness
the higher probability of reproduction
operators
population
environment
individual
tness
replication no replication
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
mutation
general framework of evolutionary cycle
operators like
mutation and...
operators
population
environment
individual
tness
replication no replication
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
mutation
crossover
general framework of evolutionary cycle
crossover
realize the idea of change and rsults in the phenomenon of adaptation
operators
population
environment
individual
tness
replication no replication
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
mutation
crossover
parent
child
general framework of evolutionary cycle
so nally we have parent individuals and children
and the cycle is closed
the constructive power of such very, very basic mechanism
lies in the fact that the cycle is repeated thousands, milions, and
milions of miolions times
it works slowly but surely ;)
and may lead to very complex structures
and here we are :)
consequences on
the musical signication problem
biology
genetics
culture
memetics
artistic
creation
the general evolution mechanism
works within e.g.:
Ed Miranda, John Al Biles, eds.
Evolutionary computer music (Springer 2007)
such a general mechanism may be obsrved everywhere
in nature and culture
click
and can be adopt to some technics of artistic creation
there are interesting experiments of evolutionary images, and texts, and music creation
for example, in my everyday work i use so called genetic algorithms to search for interesting timbral soulutions among thousands of possible
instrument combinations, in order to t some given aesthetic criteria
click
herein i will dusciss some consequences of the mechanism on the musical signication problem
consequences on
the musical signication problem
biology
genetics
culture
memetics
artistic
creation
the general evolution mechanism
works within e.g.:
lets start with the biology of music
cognitive
musicology
anthropology
neuro-psychology
systematic
musicology
bio-musicology
evolutionary
psychology
Evolutionary oriented musicology evolved from the systematic and cognitive musicology with some inuences of other
modern branches of the science
One may obsrve an interesting shift within the cognitive paradigm
the cognitivists rst discovered and examined some mechanisms in the human mind
and now they ask where they come from? what is their functions? why do they exist?
famous cognitive musicologists like Carol Krumhansl, David Huron, Ian Cross, to mention just a few
today - more and more - speak the biological language instead of the former, psychological
adaptive non-adaptive
the biological origins of music
hypothesies
when trying to answer the question of the origins of those cognitive
mechanisms
one may observe two concurrent hypothesies
adaptive and non-adaptive
adaptive
music as a survival activity (functional)
the instinct of music (Mitchen)
S.J. Mitchen, H. Papousek, S. Brown, E. Dissanayake, E. Tolbert,
changes of the genome (and anatomy)
long-term processes (neanderthals, animals)
the rst one states that there are particular, biological adaptations of human body and mind
in order to perform and to listen to music
scientists argue that music is one of fundamental activities
and serves several important functions
like:
group bonding (social integration) - music as a kind of vocal grooming
communicative function (like motherese! language)
temporal synchronisation of the group
also music stimulates the intelectual skills (the Mozart effect)
music heals and so on
and of course, the favourite within evolustionists is the
matting function of music...
culture is an emergent phenomenon arising from sexual competition
among vast numbers of individuals pursuing different mating
strategies in different mating arenas.
As every teenager knows and most psychologists forget,
cultural displays by males increase sexual access.
(Miller 1998, p. 119)
Miller, G. F.
How mate choice shaped human nature (1998)
Sexual selection for cultural displays (1999)
display hypothesis
music provides basis for the sexual selection through the cultural display
------
since we may observe some kind of musical activity of the animals one may argue that there was enough time (like milions years) to adjust the genome in order to perform music
for example, there are no adaptations for reading, yet, because it is too recent, even we face some health problems when reading too much.
so, in short, adaptive apporach states that if we leave toddlers on the desert island
when adult, they would perform music, thanks to - so called - instict of music
althought it is very attractive hypothesis, puting music very high in the hierarchy of human activities - it tells us only about its function
(in fact in every traditional culture music is never an independent, autonomous activity
it is always related to some social events, and plays some functions)
so the adaptive apporach does not explain the inner content of the piece of music - so it says nothing about the meaning of music itself
non-adaptive
music as a by-product of other adaptations (parasitic)
S. Pinker, N. Kogan, W.H. McNeil, D. Sperber
biologicaly useless (non-functional)
the non-adaptive apporach is much better here
it states that music is itself biologicaly useless,
it is kind of parastic, by-product of other adaptations
lets listen to one of non-adaptive evolutionists
Steven Pinker
lm
maybe what music does is that it combines different pieces of
all other parts of the brain, packs them into a supernormal stimulus,
something that actually presses our buttons harder than anything
in the natural environment would, and we enjoy it.
music as a by-product of
other adaptations, e.g.
- speech
- emotional calls
- motor control
auditory cheesecake
Steven Pinker
How the mind works?
The language instinct
The blank slate
personally, i like this actually very simple concept,
which says that the piece of music
is a set of extracted and concentrated stimuli
put together in particular way, to stir the emotions of the listener,
intensively
our response to sound/music
as a result of evolution
anyway, both apporaches state that our reaction to music evolved
and the history of such evolution is written in our cognitive mechanism
the question of the evolutionary roots of our reactions to music
leads into the eld of ...
bio-aesthetics
evolutionary aesthetics
bioaesthetics or aveolutionary aesthetics
and here the real story begins!!!
to me, the main impact to write this text was an article about
experiments on aesthetic estimation of di!erent landscapes, and
particular - trees
Savanna hypothesis
Orians, G.
An ecological and evolutionary approach to landscape aesthetics (1986)
Orians, G. H., & Heerwgen, J. H.
Evolved responses to landscapes (1992)
people were simply asked to choose most beautyfull trees from the presented images
it appeared that people significantly prefer trees of the african svanna, where - as we know - the human kind come from
moreover: Younger children, much more than older ones, prefer savannah landscapes of the kind our remote ancestors lived and evolved in, even when the children being studied have no
familiarity with savannahs.
there some other, interesting observations
i think all we have heard about the ideal proportions of woman body, present in every culture,
recently it appeard that so called waist-hip ratio correlates strongly with general health and fertility (in particular with optimal level of estrogen).
there are hundreds of similar data, like the worlds favourite colour is blue and so on and so on
biological response to sounds/music
obviously, it leads to the question about our innate reactions to
sounds.
today, many scientists examine such reactions of the humans and the
animals
for example the gestalt rules, described by Albert Bregman as main mechanism of the
audiory scene organisation, are purely neuro-biological
Stefani, G.
Il segno della musica (1981)
Reybrouck, M.
The musical code between nature and nurture: ecosemiotic and
neurobiological claims (2008)
and what may be interesting here, is that we may talk about
some biological basis, biological anchoring of the musical signication
there exist already some examples of this apporach
Edward Wilson - the founder of sociobiology - even postulated the integration of semiotics and biology
so far, it is not possible, however I think the biology can contribute to semiotics in some interesting way
language and music
for example, the eternal problem of musical semiotics - is music a language? - nds here a very simple explanation
music and language evolved from the same root - the vocal activity and auditory mechanisms
but later specialized in di!erent domains of communication
language is good at precisely describing the word, giving naming the objects
but as a closed (syntactic and lexical) system, it is weak at describing complex and diverse emotions, the inner states of the subject
however music is weak at describing, naming and so on
we cannot play the melody saying give me a cup of tea, please
at least not without any external convention
but! music is strong at communicating emotional states
because it invokes emotions at a very phisiological level, very easily
language of emotions
it happens because the auditory cortex is connected directly to the
limbic system where the emotions come from, this system can
inuence hormon ux, and further heart-rate, breathing rate and so on
emotional response is very fast, faster than laguage processing and conscious decisions
auditory system rpovides very e!ective way of informing about - for example - danger in the natural
environment, even about the distant or hidden danger, like predators.
India (Balkwill & Thompson, 1999)
Japan (Ohgushi & Hattori, 1996)
Italy (Baroni & Finarelli, 1994)
Germany (Langeheinecke, Schnitzler, Hischer-Buhrmeister, & Behne, 1999)
Sweden (Juslin, 1997)
Russia (Kotlyar & Morozov, 1976)
Western Hindustani (Balkwill, Thompson, & Matsunaga, 2004)
an increasing number of studies have highlighted
cross-cultural similarities in the low-level cues
(tempo, dynamics, timbre) used by musicians to
express particular emotions.
This body of research further suggests an underlying
universal code for emotion communication that are
intertwined with culture-dependant cues, as has been
observed with speech.
Livingstone S. R., W. F. Thompson
The emergence of music from the Theory of Mind
there are many researches on the emotional response to the particular
kinds of sounds, in musical cultures all around the world
here the interesting cross-cultural similarities are observed
and some underlying universals, as well
Livingstone i Thompson collected the results and set into kind of map:
Livingstone, S. R., & Thompson, W. F.
Multi-modal affective interaction: A comment on musical origins (2006)
particular coincidences of some musical features are mapped on general emotional
plane
of course, musicologists have been looking for such a simple dictionary for
hundreds of yeras, and we know it is not so simple within the artistic music
anyway those data derived from di!rent musical traditions are very interesting
however require further verications and maybe improvements
Davies, S. (2001) Philosophical perspectives on musics expressiveness
Addis, L. (1999) Of Mind and Music
Clynes, M. (1977) Sentics: the Touch of Emotions
Scherer, K. R. (1991) Emotion expression in speech and music
Cross, I. (2001) Music, mind and evolution
Cross, I. (2003) Music and Emotion
explanations
e.g.
contour theory
resemblance theory
transposable meaning
to sum up this biological part i would like to mention about some explanations of those phenomenons
I think one of the most promising is the contour theory
emotional response presents particular dramaturgy, it takes time
we observe phases like condensation, sustain, climax, release and so on
di!erent emotions show di!erent arousal countour
when the temporal countour of musical tensions is synchronized with biological response, the kind of resonanse takes place, sometimes very strong
this theory is interesting because concerns not on abstracted, nontenporal auditory stimuli
but examines longer parts of music, and suggests that musical form, or narration may provoke an a!ect as well.
so, summing up, the piece of music may be regarded as a complex set of stimuli, activating (communicating) emotions, even at the very basic, biological level,
thanks to evolutionary adjusted cognitive mechanisms
consequences on
the musical signication problem
biology
genetics
culture
memetics
artistic
creation
the general evolution mechanism
works within e.g.:
as mentioned, general evolution may be observed...
(click)
...also at the cultural level
meme (analogous to a gene)
an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour (et c.)
hosted in one or more individual minds
can reproduce itself from mind to mind
one individual inuencing another as
memetical reproduction
e.g. fashion, religious beliefs, musical style or patterns
memetics
R. Dawkins
D. Hofstadter
(about 1980)
P.F. Jenkins: Cultural transmission of song patterns and dialect
development in free-living bird population (1978)
about 1978 Jenksins published famous work about sharing and transforming melodic motives by birds, suggesting that animals can present culture-like behaviour
and about 1980 sociobiologists Dawkins & Hofstadter proposed a genetic-like model to describe cultural phenomenons, introducing the concept of memetics
they observed that the mental ideas, may be treated as gens, including their selsh reproduction.
moreover, those mems are most often reproduced which are related to survival level, like sex, food, or the shelter - place to live
so the cultural memetic mechanism may be also a product of biological evolution.
the mems can be also of musical provenience.
Dennet and Brodie say about melody as kind of musical virus (there is english word like earworm)
Please, remind rst notes of beethovens the fth
As its stored in our minds - it is a meme.
Ive just infected you with a copy of it.
operators
population
environment
individual
tness
replication no replication
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
mutation
crossover
parent
child
general framework of evolutionary cycle
the basic evolutionary cycle may be adopted as....
operators
musical culture
audience
musical
pattern
aesthetic
estimation
propagation no propagation
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
individual
transformation
combination
parent
child
general framework of evolutionary cycle
... here.
the pattern can be of a micro-scale
like melodic motive, harmonic progression, rhythmic pattern
or can be of the macro-scale, like style or technique
What advantages brings it on?
wandering melodies
Antonina Szybowska
O kontrafakturach, missae parodiae i w!druj"cych melodiach w muzyce (nie
tylko) dawnej.
(On contrafacturae, missae parodiae and wandering melodies in the
(not only) ancient music)
Antonina Szybowska, Pawe! W"sowicz
#ywe czy martwe? O ewolucji warstwy melodycznej w polskich pie$niach
religijnych
(Alive or dead? On the melodic evolution of polish religious songs.)
this perspective naturaly applies to the problem of sharing musical petterns within
the culture
those patterns are considered as live organisms, aiming at reproduction and
adaptation
an obvious application of this model is the stylometry, searching for so called
musical inuences, or examing the cultural resonanse of some musical ideas.
... an attempt to integrate the central
concerns of analytical musicology with
a neo-Darwinian meme-selectionist
perspective.
Such a viewpoint may be used, it is
argued, to unify, under a systematic
new paradigm, understanding of
both local issues of musical
structure and organization, and
global issues of musical style
conguration and its diachronic
change.
Steven Jan
one of the most so-far interesting application is presented by Steven
Jan
who analyses particular pieces of music with use of this method
I would like to use this method to create sort of geographical map of inuences within traditional, folk
music, where the processes are not so global, and go slower
R. Strauss
Metamorphosen
nal bars
as some example of memetic mechanism i would like to show last 9 bars of Metamorphosen by
R. Strauss
The composer reports in his memoires that the quotation of Beethovens marcia funebre
simply, naturally own out from the score. He composed the nal movement being unaware
that Beethoven was leading him, until the end.
The meme has replicated here.
there are many similar composers reports.
z encyclopedia of creativity
[the composer] is not so much sonscious of his ideas as possesed by them. Very often he is unaware of his exact processes of thought till he is through with them; extremely
often the completed work is incomprehensible to him immediately afetr it is nished
Roger Sessions
cytowane przez Dennetta i Slobod"
what is evolving?
i would like to end with some general reection
the gen - basic term of genetics - is a unit of undenied size
it is rather functional than morphological unit
the evolution takes places at all levels, all scales
applying the concept of memetics we may consider micro units, as well as macro
at the highest level we nd musical styles, the music, or even the culture itself
what comes out than?
the balance
?
I think the culture is balacing between some extrema
there exesist products very close to the biology
and pieces of art that absolutely do not even try to be sexy ;)
the avangard music, eg. dodepahonic, is a good example of music loosing the biological anchor
of course everybody can compose what he/she likes
but our biology doesnt listen to philosophical arguments
so we should not complain or be surprised that our speculative aesthetic ideas sometimes simply do not work in real life
as we know so called high-music, or avangard music dramatically lost the audience during 20th century
recent studies show the public interest to contemporary music at the level of 0.3-0.5% of population
we may say that the meme of dodecaphony did not survive
just like other speculative concepts, including the meme of homo sovieticus, for example
click
nobody argues that we sholud promote some matting rituals like techno parties,
but between those extrema there is still enough room for alternative solutions
K.J.Hsu ! i A.J.Hsu !, Fractal Geometry of Music, Proc.Natl.Acad.Sci. USA, 87, (1990)
Zipfs law
in music of Dufay, Mozart or Bach one may observe particular regularities
like linear relation between the size of the musical interval and probability of their occurence
click
such regularities do not exist for ex. in music of Stockhausen
of course here we will nd many other formal regularities
but they do not arise from musical practice, and are not derived from perceptual mechanism
this is what prof. A. Jarz"bska mentioned in one of articles
there exist two main concepts of musical coherence
the aristotelian one points at the rule, enigmatic formula, organizing the piece of art
in opposition, Platon claimed that both piece of music and human being are built on the same natural proportions
and during perceiving music a kind of resonanse occurs, we perceive music somehow naturally as coherent entity.
conclusions
Darwin said that
not the strongest
and not the most intelligent species will survive
but those which best response the change
I think that is why music are still in evolution
so ... let it evolve!!!
evolutionary apporach provokes many doubts and questions
some call it jus-so stories, di!cult to verify
it his highly speculative
and moreover politicaly involved
people usually do not like evolution
Emma Darwin (nee Wedgwood)
ale te# inna reeksa
to co istnieje istnieje dlaczego$, bo mamy jak%$ korzy$, bo gdzie$ zaistnia&o i trwa
je$&i obserwujemy dane zjawisko zawsze mo#emy zapyta' co takiego ono ze sob% niesie, #e jest
je$&i co$ jest to by&o lub jest potrzebne