[Fis] Reply to Pedro

Dear FISers:

At 01:21 PM 5/7/2003 +0200, Pedro Mariju�n wrote:
>
>I think you have synthesized the skeleton of a full 'info approach' to the
>phenomenon of music. However, entering into concrete responses to the
>themes you raise is quite difficult, maybe because of the dense mixing of
>biological, cultural, and abstract properties that are interacting within
>the global phenomenon of music.

(Juan, without accent on the a, answers:) Well, I am sorry, but the subject
is indeed a prime example of today's "interdisciplinarification" of science!
There is hardly a scientific problem that now-a-days can be treated
exclusively within one discipline (unfortunately our universities are not
yet prepare for that fact!). And when it comes to information as the center
of attention, "nadie se salva", as you say in Spain and I used to say in
Argentina!

>At least, I suggest adding a previous
>question to your three ones (below): WHY IS MUSIC SO PERVASIVE IN HUMAN
>SOCIETIES?
>
Your proposed question is really an expansion or clarification of what I had
in mind with my second question, WHY is there music? It is, indeed, the core
point I am trying to address in my posted FIS paper. As a short answer to
your (and my) question I would say: "Because music is the expression of an
inborn human drive to train in the sophisticated and complex acoustical
information processing needed for the comprehension and formation of human
language". That's why music is not present in the animal realm (please don't
tell me that birds deliberately make MUSIC---they just communicate about
needs or theats, like chimpanzees do when they shriek and blabber---it's us
who interpret birdsong as "music"!).

>As a brief thought experiment let us deprive contemporary societies of any
>music at all. No lullabies, no children songs, no groupal singing, no
>ballads-folk-rock-rap..., no dancing... no orchestras, choirs, marches,
>anthems, etc. (movies, TV, etc.). Quite many bizarre situations (more than
>usual!) would arise. And let us also deprive human societies of two special
>instinctive 'musics' of our species: laughter and crying. Indeed social
>life would become quite difficult --as it really happens in some daily
>environments, but fortunately we can run to appropriate 'refuges'.

An interesting and illustrative Gedankenexperiment! But I question whether
we should incorporate laughter and crying into the same category as music.
To clarify this, and other possible questions, we should really agree,
before this discussion goes any further, on WHAT music really is! I believe
that it has some structural ingredients that must be recognized and accepted
as defining attributes. Among these (see my opening paper and the background
FIS paper) we must include consonance and chroma, that "curious" circular
property of pitch. Otherwise we would quickly fall into the realm of "sounds
in general" (including noise), and lose the uniquely human aspect of music!
>>

>So, music --like some other arts-- represents in my opinion an enlargement
>of the primate emotional textures ('endogenous' social information, so much
>developed in our species).
>
I see it exactly the other way 'round!! (1) There is the evolution of human
language, and (2) To support it, a NEW, exclusively human, emotional
manifestation has developed: liking to listening and being motivated to
emitting musical sounds!

(From the opening paper:)>>Finally ... I will also speculate on the
possibility of musics based on
>>carriers other than acoustic waves, e.g., "optical music" with
>>electromagnetic waves, and show that it would not be possible to have the
>>variety of fundamental attributes so essential for our own musical cultures.
>
(says Mariju�n:)>In that regard I wonder whether the 'Visual Arts' (eg,
classical painting)
>may be considered as genuine forms of 'optical music' and respond to
>similar sensory processes and interactions with memories (and partake some
>related abstract 'forms').
>
Leaving aside the fact that in the visual arts one cannot find the
equivalents of musical consonance and chroma (because of the extremely
limited range of perceivable frequencies, see my background FIS paper), the
development of the visual arts has gone in a direction opposite to that of
(western) music. The former started as the depiction of concrete visual
images and then proceeded into more abstract representations, whereas in the
case of (western) music, it started with completely abstract forms bearing
no direct relation to real environmental sounds and only later incorporated
gradually more concrete, environmentally-related, tone structures (see last
Chapter of my book Physics and Psychophysics of Music, Springer Verlag, 1995).
 
>In further exchanges we should try to progressively fill-in this rich
>catalog of open questions (not to forget the relationship of music with
>dancing, either)!
>
For a discussion of the possible role of dancing, see W. Benzon, Beethoven's
Anvil, Basic Books, 2001 (judging from your earlier comments, you probably
would agree far more with him than with my points of view!)

Regards,

Juan

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Received on Fri May 9 01:59:36 2003