It's true that dissonance/consonance is rooted in our sensory perception. But that's not all! There is so much that is learnt, some learnt universally, some are culture specific. For instance the perception of pitch in the first place is not innate but learnt universally across all cultures. On the other hand, the perception of musical pitch structures are more likely to be culture specific. Our tolerance of dissonance is to a large extent affected by familiarity, exposure and taste. The more complex a sonic stimuli appears in terms of perception of harmonic patterns within a chord, the more dissonance it become. So familiarity with pitch patterns is a prerequisite for the perception of harmonicity and consonance/dissonance in music. http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/staff/parncutt/publications/PaStr94.pdf

Even Reading Zarlino's (1517-1590) 'Art of Counterpoint' one realises that there is a huge discrepancy between what degree of dissonance/consonance were attributed to musical intervals by different theorists. Is a third dissonant!? Is a perfect fourth dissonant?! In John Blacking's 'How Musical Is Man?' he refers to an interesting experiment where they played consonant perfect intervals (if I remember correctly) to certain African musicians (can't remember the exact origin) in a lab. The subjects however thought they sounded very harsh. This didn't make sense at first because even within the musical culture of the subjects these perfect intervals were described as pleasant. The problem of course was that in the lab they were using sine-tones, which is anything but musical to the musician subjects!

In addition it is not the perception of dissonance/consonance alone that creates musical meaning, but the roll that composers give to such phenomena (i.e. dissonance/consonance). And this roll has changed dramatically throughout western music tradition, which is a proof that musical perception relies far more on learnt (active or passive) behavior than it does on innate (although this cannot be excluded from the equation either).see David Huron's 'Sweet Anticipation'.

It would be very naive to think that there exists a universal musical language for all mankind: a rather outdated and eurocentric concept based on misinformation or intentional (although often unconscious) misrepresentation of reality.

Best
Peiman



2008/5/11 Chuckk Hubbard <badmuthahubbard@gmail.com>:
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Dave Seidel <dave@superluminal.com> wrote:
> Agreed.  This music is very much bound to a particular (Euro-centric)
> musical tradition.  I might accept the idea that if a person had a

It's true that the music is from one tradition, but it is also true
that the consonances of what's traditionally called tonal music are
based on physical truths...  The major triad, any modulation by a
fifth, a 9th, or a major third, none of these things are just by
chance or just "learned", and most of them are not unique to European
tradition.  Actually, when one studies the tunings of Indian music it
can be a bit of a disappointment to learn most of the notes are
similar to Western ones, just tuned more accurately (e.g. Pythagorean
third is not mixed with major third in the same scale; but both are
used in similar ways as in Western music, but they're not equated).
And, at least in the Carnatic ragas I looked at, the scale step
equivalent to SOL is never violated; there are alternate tunings for
all other notes, but there is always a perfect fifth above the
"tonic".  In other words, Western music implemented its consonances
because they sounded good, not the other way around.  IMO they stopped
too soon, though; the upper harmonics offer a bounty of harmonic
richness few care to explore.
With all the research that's been done on pattern perception, Gestalt,
Law of Pragnanz, saying that listening to music can't develop a
child's brain is like saying that solving geometric puzzles can't
develop a child's brain, or learning multiple languages, or chess.  In
order to hear the patterns in the music, the brain has to exercise its
pattern recognition ability (a truism).  Perhaps this doesn't increase
intelligence- Nik Lygeros, among others, says that thinking can be
learned, but intelligence can't- but I don't doubt that it helps
develop whatever other quality it is that makes people sharp.

> background in this music (meaning: some training or education, or at least
> immersion) that listening to it might have some beneficial effects, because
> then the listener had some cognitive and perceptual preparation.  But if you

For a 2-year-old?  I think the contention is that listening to certain
music *is* that kind of education.
If anything, I'd say the focus on Mozart is because his music is so
often melodically simple and straightforward, meaning the parents
won't object to it.  As my father says, it's good for 3-year-olds
because even a 3-year-old can understand it.

> are from a completely different musical culture, I don't expect it would
> mean very much at all, and might even be perceived as cacophonous (no
> offense to cacophony).

I don't think that's possible.  "Boring", maybe, but cacophonous?
I don't mean to bash Mozart, I do enjoy his music sometimes, it's just
not the most exciting for me.

>  Personally, as someone who grew up in the States and heard both classical
> and folk music all the time growing up, it was years before I was able to
> listen music from the classical era with any interest at all -- it just left
> me cold.  For me, Stravinsky was the way in, and I worked both backward and
> forward from that.

There will never be an Oprah Book Club book about it, but I suspect
Stravinsky has a similar effect, but only for more intelligent
children.  Or perhaps they chose Mozart because Stravinsky would
frighten the parents.  Can't have the kids burning down the playpen.
Thanks to Dad, my way in was all Zappa (literally from infancy), and
later Zappa was a way in to Stravinsky.  Thanks Dad!

-Chuckk


>
>  - Dave
>
>
>  Pedro Ferreira wrote:
>
> > I think that _teaching_ music to kids is a great way of stimulating
> > their intelligence and the development of their abilities, but I find
> > it hard to believe that the simple fact that they just _listen_ to
> > music will make them smarter. Maybe your intelligence actually
> > increases (for a limited amount of time) in response to sound
> > frequencies: you can stimulate it artificially by other known means,
> > though with no permanent results. However, all the hype around this
> > effect seems to be a huge load of BS (actually, the "Mozart effect" is
> > widely known as a classical example of a scientific myth).
> > In any case, teach your kids the practice of listening to good music
> > :). It won't hurt them for sure...
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Pedro
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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>



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