Urgeborgenheit
and the origin of
religious and musical emotion
Richard Parncutt
Centre for Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria
SysMus Graz
Urgeborgenheit and the origin of religious and musical emotion
Widely considered untranslatable, the German word “Geborgenheit” invokes safety
(protection), personal warmth (companionship, trust, acceptance, love) and peace, in a
cosy location. In the Christian calendar, Geborgenheit is strongest at Christmas,
combining representations of a divine mother-child dyad with communities of family and
friends in warm houses in a dark, snowy world.
“Urgeborgenheit” is primordial Geborgenheit. Its ontogenesis is presumably what an infant
feels in the presence of a loving, attentive mother - essential for healthy psychological
development and playful learning; it involves motherese and may begin prenatally (mother
schema). As for phylogenesis, motherese presumably promoted the survival of human
infants that were born earlier and more fragile due to upright maternal gait (3-5 million
years ago) and increasing head size (2 000 000 – 200 000 years).
Adults feel Geborgenheit in rituals that combine spirituality (magic, religion) with music
(dance). Can Geborgenheit’s adaptive value explain why music and religion exist? A
cognitive theory of music’s origin may involve childplay for acquiring cognitive skills; a
cognitive theory of religion’s origin, universally unanswerable questions (cf. Gödel’s
incompleteness theorem). But emotional aspects are also important, and Urgeborgenheit
is an interesting candidate. We relate to music as if to an emotional virtual person. In
monotheistic religions, god is all loving, all powerful, and all knowing - like a mother from
the infant perspective. Geborgenheit may also explain why people today are strongly
attracted to concerts despite the availability of recordings, and to religious activities
despite doubts about teachings.
These speculations will be analysed against relevant literature in developmental
psychology, human evolution, anthropology, music psychology, religious studies, theology,
psychoanalysis, and the sociology of ritual.
Are we ignoring Christmas?
“An ethnographer who discovered so important
a ritual in some exotic culture might he tempted
to make it the centerpiece of his (sic.) cultural
description; it is remarkable that social scientists
have given so little attention to this conspicuous
cluster of symbolic and practical acts.”
Caplow (1982, p. 383), cited by Hirschman & LaBarbera (1989)
Caplow, Theodore, (1982), "Christmas Gifts and Kin Networks," American Sociological Review, Vol 47, June, 383-392.
Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Priscilla A. LaBarbera (1989) ,"The Meaning of Christmas", in SV - Interpretive Consumer Research,
eds. Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 136-147.
Today’s Western Christmas
 Sensory

Food, drink, smells, lights,
decorations, music
 Rituals

pleasures
with rules
Don’t open presents unless…
 Santa

A

The god of materialism?
festival of love
kinship, solidarity, altruism
Is Christmas too emotional, special,
or embarrassing for researchers?
Banned from January to November!
The First Noel
 arr. David Willcocks (link)
 sung by Celtic Woman (link)
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
 arr. Willcocks (link)
 sung by Jewel (link)
Typical musical emotions
Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik (2003)
POSITIVE: peace, harmony, safety, warmth, humility, wonder,
awe, reverence, respect, joy, love, perfection,
rapture
NEGATIVE: loneliness, longing, melancholy, embarrassment
Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer (2008)
POSITIVE: wonder, transcendence, tenderness, nostalgia,
peacefulness, power, joyful activation
NEGATIVE: tension, sadness
Is this beginning to look a bit like Christmas?
Xmas music & national feelings
“...joulumusiikki events are seen as both
expressions and constructions of
‘Finnishness’ “ (Hebert et al., 2012)
Applies to
 music in general
 Xmas music in particular
Hebert, D., Kallio, A. A., & Odendaal, A. (2012). Not so silent night: Tradition, transformation and
cultural understandings of Christmas music events in Helsinki, Finland. Ethnomusicology Forum,
21 (3)
Basic trust (Urvertrauen)
of infant to mother in 1st year
 Feeling of who/what one can trust or mistrust
 Prerequisite for next developmental stages
 Strong evolutionary adaptation
(Erikson, 1950)
 Relationship
Disruption  psychopathic personality, depression,
delinquency, suicide (Bowlby, 1970)
Erikson, Erik H. (1950). Childhood and society.
Bowlby, John (1970). Disruption of affectional bods and its effects on behavior. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 2, 7586.
Geborgenheit

We easily empathize
with a human or nonhuman baby. Do we
share its emotion?
safety (protection by place and
people)
 warmth/love (companionship,
trust, acceptance)
 cosiness (feels good  positive
valence)
 peace (no conflict  low arousal)
.
“Urgeborgenheit”
original, primordial Geborgenheit
Typical musical emotions
The positive ones are like Geborgenheit
Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik (2003)
POSITIVE: peace, harmony, safety, warmth, humility, wonder,
awe, reverence, respect, joy, love, perfection,
rapture
NEGATIVE: loneliness, longing, melancholy, embarrassment
Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer (2008)
POSITIVE: wonder, transcendence, tenderness, nostalgia,
peacefulness, power, joyful activation
NEGATIVE: tension, sadness
Are these the main emotions of a modern western Christmas?
Christmas and Geborgenheit

Theological aspect
• Emmanuel = God with us

Symbolic aspect: Madonna
• De-sexualized (patriarchy, child perspective)

Social aspect: religious/family ritual
• community singing, eating, presents

Virgin and Child,
Sandro Botticelli,
1480.
Material aspects
• A warm house in a dark, snowy world
• Sensory delights
Christmas feels especially geborgen in Europe
and America since the 19th century
Mother-infant relationship
and the “true meaning of Christmas”
Conservative adult male perspective
Madonna and child = institutional representation
 Patriarchal meaning of Xmas: women’s role

Mother’s perspective
Authentic, instinctive drive to love one’s own child
 Popular meaning of Xmas: human love
Child’s perspective
Virgin and Child,
Sandro Botticelli,
1480.
God is like mother as perceived by infant
 Church’s meaning of Xmas: divine love
Infant vs mother schema
(Parncutt, 2009)
Infant schema (cuteness)  survival! (Lorenz)
 Inverse: Mother schema?



Fetal knowledge of maternal sounds, movements and
emotions could promote bonding and infant survival
Multimodal and holistic: baby cannot analyse it
Bhārat
Mātā
Mother
India
Evidence for mother schema
 early hearing & learning – main function is bonding
 experiments on pre- and transnatal learning
…All of this without reflective consciousness
Feldman, R., et al. (1999). The nature of the mother’s tie to her infant. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry,
40, 929-939.
Is the mother schema
the origin of music?
Evidence:

Motherese: Its universality,
complexity and musicality

Musical skills of infants and children

Music as persona

Music and changed states,
spirituality, enclosure, flow
From motherese to music
“It is not surprising that societies all over the world have
developed these nodes of culture that we call ceremonies
and rituals, which do for their members what mothers
naturally do for their babies: engage their interest, involve
them in a shared rhythmic pulse, and thereby instill feelings
of closeness and communion. The inborn propensities for
imitation, reciprocity, and emotional communion in infancy
have become further elaborated and used in ritualized and
ceremonial forms that themselves build and reinforce
feelings of unity among adults, all of which ultimately serve
to hold the group together.”
(Ellen Dissanayake, 2000, p. 64, cited by Davies)
Lost and found in music
(Clarke, 2012)
“Getting lost in the music”
 Pre-linguistic infantile state? Can’t separate senses
“Finding oneself in the music”
 Infant acquires social identity in bonding/separation
“You are the music” (T. S. Eliot 1943)
 Baby does not perceive itself as separate
“Embodied empathy”
 Common to motherese and music
Clarke, Eric F. (2014). Lost and found in music: Music, consciousness and subjectivity. Musicae Scientiae, 18,
354-368.
The phylogeny of music
“Mother schema” theory (Parncutt, 2011)
large
brain
early
birth
fragile
infant
motherese
babbling
Larger brain 2 million or 200 000 years ago
(Falk, 2000; Mithen, 1996)
Today, the first 3 postnatal months are the “4th trimester”
The ontogeny of music
The “mother schema” theory
prenatal
bonding
transnatal
memory*
motherese
play**
* Long-term multimodal recognition memory
• multimodal = sound + movement + emotion
• for similar, repeated patterns
• not episodic memory! (e.g. no memory for birth)
** Both play and ritual:
• evoke “motherese feelings”
• are reinforced by operant conditioning
ritual**
Three theses
The emotions evoked by (modern
Western) Christmas (music)
1. are more musical and less everyday than the
emotions of other music
2. originated in maternal bonding as “experienced”
& “remembered” by the infant or fetus
3. were evoked by music at the archeological
"cultural explosion” (Mithen, 1999)
Corollary
We might learn basic things about music
and emotion…
…from a systematic study of emotion in
modern European and American
Christmas music
Part 2: A more general approach
More theses:
Music is an evolutionary byproduct
(spandrel) of adaptive behaviors…
…that are mainly associated with reproduction (not survival)
…of which the main one is the relationship between a
fetus/infant and its mother
Stages of sexual reproduction
1. Flirting and mate selection
2. Romantic love and sex
3. Prenatal development*
4. Bonding and motherese*
5. Childplay
*3 & 4 are relevant for modern
European/American Christmas music
1. Flirting and mate selection
Darwin (1871), Miller (2000)
 The


idea
Males use music to attract females
Females use music to judge male fitness
 Evidence



(a bit shaky…)
zillions of love songs
musicians are mainly male
we are more creative when sexually active
2. Romantic love and sex
Ghizé (2012)
Are being in love and orgasm the original
ASCs (altered states of consciousness)?


Can they explain the universal motivation to
combine drugs, music, and ritual?
Or is prenatal “experience” a better model?
Susan K. de Ghizé (2012). Isolde’s multiple orgasms: sexology and Wagner’s
Transfiguration. EuroMac
3. Prenatal development
Parncutt (1993, 2006, 2011, 2015)
The idea:
The fetus continuously is exposed to
maternal sounds and movements
 hormonal/behavioral correlates of maternal
mood/emotion
 Associated by classical conditioning?

The fetus acquires a mother schema that
promotes postnatal bonding and survival


familiarity with typical sound/movement patterns,
taste/smell etc.
associations between that and mood/emotion
4. Bonding and motherese
Dissanayake (2000), Falk (2004)
Infant survival depends on bonding

mother schema ↔ infant schema
Motherese & babbling are musical
•
•
•
prosodic exaggeration
rhythmic, melodic, gestural
emotional, meaningful
Evidence: many studies on
•
•
motherese
infant musicality
5. Childplay
Children play ((with) music) to train
skills for survival and reproduction


physical skills: strength and coordination
social skills: language and emotion
E.g. music performance
alleviates dyslexia
(Seither-Preisler et al., 2014)
Stages of sexual reproduction
1. Flirting and mate selection
2. Romantic love and sex
3. Prenatal development*
4. Bonding and motherese*
5. Childplay
*3 & 4 are relevant for modern
European/American Christmas music
What about fighting music?
Could music be a spandrel of behaviors
that promote survival (not reproduction)?
 Is fighting music selected for if it helps win battles?
 Does fighting produce an ASC that suppresses
pain (like being in love, orgasm, birth)?
But fighting music does not necessarily
promote social bonding:
 Coordination is not necessary to win a battle
 Coordination is intrinsic to stages of reproduction
What about other ASCs?
That are shared by humans and non-humans
State of shock following a serious accident?


Function is to maintain essential organs
Weaker relationship to music or shamanic practices
(healing: yes; communicating with spirits: no)
Dreams?

Less relevant, since music happens when awake
Advantages of this theory
Evolutionary and ecological
 Based on observable, operationalizable
behaviors, affordances, motivations
Physiological
 Clear foundations e.g. oxytocin
Linked to pre-human behaviors
 Can plausibly explain origins
Urgeborgenheit and the origin of
religious and musical emotion
Fragen über Fragen...
•
Are modern Western Christmas carols a musicemotional archetype?
•
Can the mother-infant bond explain:
•
•
•
•
•
this music?
music and changed states?
the “lost and found” in music?
music generally?
More generally, is musical emotion based on
flirting, sex, prenatal life, motherese, and play?