Moments of Permanence - Music and the Mind

From: stranger Date: July 9th, 2009 06:52 am (UTC) Leaping in after reading your journal on DW (Link)

This is a really good question. I'm guessing humans make music that animals (mostly) don't in the same way humans make pictures and sculpture, and for that matter, language and writing, as representational and symbolic communication. Even so, music is a lot more abstract than most communication, yet as you say it means something to most humans.

From what I've seen in surveys of different cultures' music, rhythm is the most important element in many, and it's pretty clear that music with a strong rhythm for dancing was (and is) a large part of European-heritage music. The major-minor harmonic system in European music grew out of Church music, which originated as mnemonic chants that were elaborated over time -- about 10 centuries of time. You could call that a gift from God, but I prefer to think of it as human endeavor for one of the many reasons human do things, religion, and in this case, religion as a political institution. In any case, secular music developed separately as well. The emphasis on sung music, leading to harmony and counterpoint, may not be unique to Europe (those overview surveys of other cultures' music weren't very comprehensive, so I can't be sure), but I don't know of another musical tradition that developed so many grouped orchestral instruments that "sing" melodic lines. My impression is that non-European instrumental music is often made up of mostly percussive, if tonal, sound, so what you say about rhythm as basic seems right.

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