A comparative evaluation of current
theories of the origin of music (OoM)
Richard Parncutt
Centre for Systematic Musicology,
University of Graz, Austria
SysMus Graz
International Summer School on Systematic
Musicology and Sound and Music Computing
(ISSSM), Genova, Italia
15 March 2014
Across cultures and periods, music is social (coordinating group behavior, strengthening group identity),
emotional (evoking basic and everyday emotions but especially pleasure, wonder, tenderness, nostalgia),
and melodic/rhythmic (within physical constraints of the human body). It is generally accepted that music
and speech had a common ancestor called musilanguage; the two may have split between 10^6 and 10^5
years ago. The split must have occurred because music acquired a special non-linguistic function, e.g. to
facilitate group cohesion (like grooming), mate selection (flirting), or cognitive skill acquisition (childplay).
In other approaches, music developed in a continuous line from protomusical primate behaviors, or
emerged accidentally because it was somehow pleasurable. Another candidate for music's origin is
motherese, which emerged some 10^6 years ago because it promoted infant survival when gestation
became shorter due to increased brain size and a narrower pelvis, in turn due to bipedalism (Mithen,
2009). Musilanguage and motherese may even be the same thing.
We do not know enough about ancient environments and behaviors - let alone ancient music or
protomusic - to evaluate such theories directly. But we can evaluate how well each theory predicts the
apparently universal social functions, emotional qualities, and structural features of music as we know it
today. That may be the most objective way that we have to evaluate and compare competing theories.
In this presentation I will attempt to systematically list the main characteristic features of music as we
know it today and evaluate the extent to which each theory predicts each feature. A list of such features is
essentially just a definition of music. A major difficulty in defining music has always been to distinguish it
from speech, with which it shares many characteristics. A possible solution is first to list the common
features of music and speech (comparable with a definition of musilanguage) and then to list the ways in
which music and speech differ. Music and speech are both acoustic signals, and both are structured
(gestural, rhythmic, melodic, syntactic) and both are social (meaningful, emotional, intentional). By
comparison to speech, music is less lexical, less socially essential, more spiritual, more repetitive, more
exact in pitch/time, less exact in timbre, and more expertise-oriented. A careful analysis of the extent to
which each theory predicts these features does not clearly distinguish four leading theories from each
other (group cohesion, mate selection, skill acquisition, motherese) but it does seem to eliminate primate
behaviors and non-adaptive pleasure seeking.
Centre for Systematic Musicology
Uni Graz, Austria
Bernd Brabec
Ethnomusicology
Michaela Schwarz
Secretary
Erica Bisesi
Hande Saglam
Expression in piano music Music and Migration
Sabrina Sattmann
Music psychology
Andreas Fuchs
Music technology
Contents
 Definition
of music
What are we trying to explain, exactly?
 Overview
of current theories
How music might have “begun”
 Comparative

evalution
How well does each predict musical features?
Language and music
universal features
Cecilia Bartoli
Cécile Kyenge
Language and
music
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
acoustic
meaningful
gestural
rhythmic + melodic
syntactic
social
emotional
intentional
Music
(compared to language)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
less lexical
less socially essential
more spiritual
more repetitive
more exact in pitch/time,
less exact in timbre
6. more expertise-oriented
7. DANCE???
Both language and music are
1. Acoustic
physical vibrations of voice, instruments, air, ear...
Physical limitations:



physiology of voice and ear
size  resonances of vocal tract
f0 range of music ≈ 100 – 1000 Hz
Both language and music are
2. Meaningful
They communicate “information”
language: obvious?
music:
mysterious?
philosophical & psychological issues
Both language and music are
3. Gestural
Both involve body movement (corporality)
Language

theories of origin based on sign and gesture
Music


dance, conducting, musicians’ gestures
talk about music: “rising melody”, “fast music”
Both language and music are
4. Rhythmic and melodic
Speech: timing + intonation = prosody
DonJohnson
Rice University
Music: rhythm + contour = melody
Both language and music are
5. Syntactic
Language

nouns, verbs, subjects etc.
Music

motives, scale steps, beats etc.
Both



contextual probabilities
hierarchical structures
ambiguities (esp. music)
Both language and music are
6. Social
Language and music


give groups and participants identity
enable & motivate coordinated action
Different “natural” constellations


language: pairs
music:
groups
Both language and music are
7. Emotional
Emotional communication through prosody
(timing, pitch, loudness, timbre)
Music focuses on:
wonder, transcendence,
tenderness, nostalgia,
peacefulness, power, joyful
activation, tension, sadness
(Zentner et al, 2008)
Both language and music are
8. Intentional
o
Planning
o
o
Metacognition, reflection
o
o
thinking about past and future
thinking about thinking
Theory of mind
o
others’ “minds” are different
 language: lying
 music: emotional manipulation
Differences
Music – as compared to language
1
not lexical
2
less syntactic
3
less socially essential
4
more spiritual
5
more repetitive
6
more exact in pitch/time, less in timbre
7
more expertise-oriented
1. Music is not lexical
Words can be defined in dictionaries.
Meaning does not depend on sound.
Musical elements not defined in dictionaries.
Meaning does depend on sound.
2. Music is less syntactic
Language Music
Is syntax integral to meaning?
Yes
Does scrambling destroy message? More
No
Less
3. Music is less
socially essential
 People

Relatively big social problem
 People

with aphasia
with amusia
Relatively small social problem
4. Music is more spiritual
transcendent, connecting, life-changing
Music is more ritualised
• special times, special places, special feelings
Language is more everyday
• any time, any place, any feeling
4. Music is more repetitive
 people
usually say things only once
 musical themes are usually repeated
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
I must not talk
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
in class
5. Music is more exact in pitch
and time; language, in timbre
 Pitch-time
patterns in music
 thousands of melodies
 Timbre

in language
 thousands of words
6. Music is more expertiseoriented
 Speaking


everyone can do it
everyone practices
 Playing


music
experts are admired
only experts practice
What is a “good” theory?
 Satisfies
general criteria for good theories
 Accounts for many musical features
A “good” theory is...
simple
 parsimonious, falsifiable
general  accounts for range of phenomena
focused  on the main issues
concrete  clearly defined terms, processes
logical
 clear argument
empirical  observation-based, ecological
seminal  inspires new approaches
Ockham
Kuhn
Popper
Gibson
A good theory of OoM
should explain or be consistent with as many points as possible:
Language and
music
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
acoustic
meaningful
gestural
rhythmic + melodic
syntactic
social
emotional
intentional
Music
(compared to language)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
not lexical
less syntactic
less socially essential
more spiritual
more repetitive
more exact in pitch/time,
less in timbre
7. more expertise-oriented
Music: a cultural construct of singing, dancing, playing instruments?
Kinds of theory of OoM
 Prerequisites
or behaviors?
 Different prehistoric periods
 One of more origins
Prerequisites versus behaviors
two kinds of “origin”
Prerequisites include
 physiology

vocal tract, fast neural processing...
 psychology

reflective language, theory of mind...
 latent

abilities
ability to synchronize to a beat, e.g. Snowball
Behaviors include
“singing”
 motherese
 animal
When did “music” “begin”?
Years ago
Relevance for humanity
Relevance for music
100 000 000 animals
acoustic communication
10 000 000
primates
sonic social coordination
3 000 000
tools
1 000 000
large brain, social cognition
300 000
low larynx  variety of sounds
100 000
•
•
•
•
10 000
• agriculture, villages, writing
• hierarchical social structures
• pentatonic/diatonic
• rich oral traditions
1 000
religious politics
• polyphony, notation
100
electrical technologies
• new tonalities
• sound recording
reflection, theory of mind
speech: complex vocab & syntax
cultural explosion: art, religion
exit from Africa
lang.-music separation
• instruments
• scales, metre
• complex ritual
Origin or origins?
Did different processes
contribute to music in
different periods?
Leading theories of OoM
 Musilanguage
 Emotional
coordination
 Non-human animal behaviors
 Non-adaptive pleasure-seeking
Musilanguage
Emotional-lexical vocal communication
Were music and language once one? Does music exist
because it has different social functions from language?
My assumption:
Yes, obviously
Not obvious:
Separation was
 functional and deliberate?
 start of “consciousness”?
 cf. phylogeny and ontogeny
Emotional coordination
Does music exist because it coordinates group emotion,
which promotes group survival?
Theoretical foundation
•
•
Music can coordinate emotions of many people (social control in ritual)
Groups with music can be larger; compete better with other groups
Evidence:
• Language & music can fulfil social function of grooming (Dunbar)
• Growth of group size with brain size
Accounts for music’s...
social function, emotion, intentionality
NOT spirituality, strong emotion
Non-human animal behaviors
Is music an elaboration of ancestral behaviors?
Examples:



singing (birds, whales, gibbons)
territorial marking (wolves...)
synchronous chorusing (chimpanzees)
For: may explain unconscious “drives”
Against: isolated, impoverished skills
Can account for music’s...
repetition, social function, emotion
NOT complexity, intentionality, spirituality
Non-human animals are amazingly bad at
music and language - as the photos suggest
Non-adaptive pleasure seeking
Does music exist because it activates neural reward systems?
 Uses

multiple existing neural systems:
motor, ASA, language, social, aggression...
 Counterevidence


based on accident – could go in the wrong direction?
musicians do not get addicted and suffer withdrawal!
 Accounts
for music’s...
emotion, repetition, spirituality
NOT gesture, structure, syntax
NOT social function, intentionality
Music and stages of
sexual reproduction
1. Flirting
2. Prenatal development
3. Motherese
4. Childhood
1. Flirting: Mate attraction
Does music exist because it indicates male reproductive fitness?
 The


idea
Males use music to attract females
Females use music to judge male fitness
 Evidence



(shaky…)
love songs
musicians are mainly male
we are more creative when sexually active
 Counterevidence



no gender diff. in music ability; androgeny
other ways for females to evaluate fitness
humans are smarter than peacocks
 Accounts
for music’s...
emotion, intentionality, expertise orientation - NOT spirituality, social glue
2. Prenatal development
Does music exist because it evokes the mother schema?
The idea
Fetus acquires mother schema that promotes
postnatal survival and includes sound and movement
 motherese, play, ritual
Evidence



Musical skills of infants and children
Music as persona (mother perceived by fetus?)
Musical emotion is strong, spiritual (e.g. awe),
changed states, enclosure, flow, non-lexical
Counterevidence:



Hard to test causal relations
Evidence is circumstantial
Unfalsifiable ?
3. Mother-infant communication
Is music elaborated motherese?
Motherese & babbling are musical
•
•
•
prosodic exaggeration
rhythmic, melodic, gestural
emotional, meaningful
Evidence: studies on
•
•
motherese
infant musicality
4. Childhood: Playing, training
Is music elaborated childplay?
Childplay develops cognitive, social and
motor skills, promoting survival


performance, dance  physical skills, coordination
listening  cognitive skills, language
Doubts:


Does this kind of training really promote survival?
Is there a “Mozart effect”?
Accounts for music’s...


social functions, pleasureexpertise orientation
NOT spirituality
THEORY/
CRITERION
animal
behav
useless
pleasure
flirting play
skill
emotion
coord.
motherinfant
acoustic
1
1
1
1
1
1
meaning
1
1
1
1
1
1
gesture
1
1
1
1
1
1
rhy & mel
1
1
1
1
1
1
syntax
0.5
0
0.5
1
0.5
1
social
1
0
0.5
1
1
1
emotional
0.5
0.5
1
0.5
1
1
intentional
0
0.5
1
1
1
1
non-lexical
1
1
1
1
1
1
repetitive
1
1
1
1
1
1
spiritual
0
0.5
0
0
0
1
unessential
1
1
1
1
1
1
expertise
0
0
1
1
0
0.5
evidence
0.5
0
0.5
0
1
0.5
TOTAL
2.5
1.5
4.5
4.5
4.5
6.0
Conclusion
Is music...
40% motherese
20% flirting
20% childplay
20% emotion coord?
Infant musicality
e.g. many studies by Trehub and collaborators
Sensitivity to...
melodic contour

relative pitch/duration

specific musical intervals

changes in unequal scales/rhythms
+ pulse (Winkler; Phillips-Silver)

These are “predispositions”
“evident in infancy, before they have obvious utility”
(Trehub, 2001)
Origins of infant musicality
Genetic (Trehub)
selection for music (mate attraction,
training, social glue, motherese…)
Learned (Parncutt)
prenatal exposure to changing maternal
sound, movement and hormone levels
Prenatal cognition
Human gestation: 40 weeks




Taste from 15 weeks
Hearing from 20 weeks
Light sensitivity from 28 weeks (Lowery, 2002)
Memory (Hepper, 1991) & learning (Hepper, 1996)
possible functions: practice, infant-mother bonding,
promotion of breastfeeding, language acquisition
Prenatal hearing in animals
Yes: humans, sheep, goats, guinea pigs
No: gerbils, rats, cats
Function:
 Prenatal bonding?
 Practice for postnatal perception?
Prenatal learning

Fetal rats learn in response to intrauterine
stimulation administered occasionally over 5 days
(Smotherman & Robinson, 1990)

Fetal humans learn from maternal sound,
movement ... almost constantly for 20 weeks

Trivial: Why should a fetus be less good at
learning than a non-human animal?
Infant ≠ fetus?
 Sudden


physiological changes at birth:
Breathing
Digestion
 No
psychological or neurological change!
“Birth is a trivial event in development. Nothing
neurologically interesting happens”
(Janet DiPietro, cited in Psychology Today, 1998)

From about 32 weeks fetus behaves like newborn
 Extrapolate infant behavior to fetal behavior?
The mother schema
(Parncutt, 2009)

Infant schema (cuteness) promotes 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
Evidence for mother schema
 very early hearing & learning – what function?
 fetus learns maternal smell, taste, diet  preferences
(Joy Brown, 2008)
 fetus distinguishes maternal voice from loudspeaker
on mother’s abdomen (Hepper et al., 2007)
…All of this without reflective awareness
The phylogeny of music
The “mother schema” theory
large
brain
early
birth
fragile
infant
motherese
babbling
Larger brain 2 to 1.5 million 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**
ritual**
* Prerequisite: Long-term multimodal recognition memory
• multimodal = sound + movement + emotion
• for similar, repeated patterns
• not episodic memory! (e.g. no memory for birth)
** Play is like motherese , ritual is like play
• Both evoke “motherese feelings”
• Both are reinforced by operant conditioning
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.”
(Dissanayake, 2000, p. 64, cited by Davies)
Musilanguage and motherese
Hypothesis: They are the same thing
• Makes theory more parsimonious, concrete, tangible
• No evidence that they are different
• A concrete scenario for OoM
Music and religion/spirituality
Why the strong connection
In all known human cultures?
Prerequisites for religious belief
Basic morality
Reciprocal
altruism
Are gods supernatural police? (Matt Rossano)
Mental images and causality
Tool
use  (-2 000 kya)
Formulation of beliefs
Language,
ability to construct narratives
Large brain (500 kya)
Construction of gods: Theory of mind, agent detection
Oral tradition: Gullibility of children (Dawkins)
Monotheistic tendencies
in world religions
Religion
Billions of
people
Christianity
Islam
2
1.5
Hindu
1
Buddhist
0.5
folk
No religion
1
1
Hindu
Poly- or mono-theistic?
3 aspects of universal supreme
god: Brahma (creator), Shiva
(destroyer), Vishnu (protector)
Buddhism
A- or mono-theistic?
3 jewels: Buddha, Dharma
(teachings) and Sangha
(community)
Origins of religious emotion
An approach from anthropology and animal behavior
“the soulful need to pray to gods, to praise God with hymns,
to shake in terror before the power of invisible spirits, to fear
for one’s life at the hands of the unknown or to feel bathed in
all-enveloping love from the heavens. … The inaccessibility
to language of the sacred experience mirrors what Martin
Buber writes … God ‘is wrapped in a cloud but reveals itself,
it lacks but creates language. We hear no You and yet we
feel addressed; we answer—creating, thinking, acting: with
our being we speak the basic word, unable to say You with
our mouth’”
Barbara King (2007). Evolving God: A provocative view of
the origins of religion. New York: Doubleday.
Pre- & perinatal mother schema





multimodal representation
behavior, states, predictions
the first schema ever
- in ontogeny and phylogeny
mirror of mother‘s infant schema
both schemata  infant survival
 human
qualities
of gods and spirits?
Bhārat Mātā = Mother India
national personification
of India as a mother goddess
God
according to Wikipedia
Not only the origin of everything, but also:
o
o
o
o
supernatural and eternal
overseer of the universe
omni-scient, -potent, -present, -benevolent
divinely simple
…a culturally reconstructed mother schema?
o
originally ungendered and unpoliticized
o
o
cf. Jung’s mother archetype
transmitted by non-episodic, pre-linguistic memory
o
o
not “remembered” in the everyday sense
social and cultural - not individual
Chora - χώρα
Ancient / modern Greek

womb; popular dance / country, region
Plato

maternal space where forms materialize
Julia Kristeva



prelinguistic space
place of mobility, dissolution, renewal
source of emotion, instinctive drives
Canterbury Cathedral
Jacques Derrida

feminine roles: mother, nurse, receptacle
Carnegie Hall
Acoustics of churches
“Appropriate for worship”
= psychological connection to prenatal experience?
1. Reinforcement of low frequencies
Prenatal sound is low-pass filtered
2. Suppression of directional cues
(Criteria for good room acoustics include “envelopment”)
Fetus cannot localise sound sources
“Supplication” or fetal position?
Islam
Jewish prayer
Plaza Hall, Jerusalem
youtube
Hinduism
Buddhism
Baha‘i
Sikhism
Origin of consciousness
reflective language  reflective awareness
100 000 years ago…
No fundamental neural change
No clear benefits for survival and reproduction
Scenario:
bigger brain  earlier birth  fragile infant  motherese
Infant survival depended on mother guessing its needs
strong evolutionary pressure!
 empathy, role of mirror neurons
 theory of mind, metarepresentation, consciousness
 parallel linguistic development (motherese)
The origin of music in the
mother-infant relationship
...maybe even the origin of language and religion…
Larger brain + bipedalism  earlier birth




infant fragility “atriciality”
more parental care  survival
new, complex infant-mother interaction
Reflective language, arts, culture…
Accounts for music’s...
•
•
•
•
structures
functions
emotions
spirituality