Abstract
This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved.
Highlights
Introduction of milk revolutionized theNeolithic lifestyle, supporting the psychological revolution in human-animal relations and bi-specific musical communication—especially in Northern Europe, where milk quickly replaced fish as the main food—manifested by the widespread adoption of milk-storing pottery (Cramp et al, 2014)
This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born
A degree can fluctuate in its frequency within a certain range of values that is usually equal or smaller than the interval between the adjacent degreesIII—either in a form of a temporary alteration of that degree or the portamento gliding between the adjacent tonesXLVII
Summary
Changes of the fundamental frequency (FF) between the consecutive tones within the same timbral register and voice/part. Consecutive changes in the relations of harmonics between the harmonic series of the concurrently sounding tones. The number and relations of familiar conventional structural components in grouping of tones, themselves forming stereotypes of arrangement specific to certain genresXLIII; varying along 3 axes: density, rangeXLIV and functionsXLV. Each texture breaks into a number of “stream segments” at its surface level of perceptionXLVII; forming discrete components—“textural cells” used as bricks in constructing a texture by vertical (chords) and horizontal grouping (motifs) of various complexity, functionality and hierarchic relations—ascribed specific semantic valuesXII. A degree can fluctuate in its frequency within a certain range of values that is usually equal or smaller than the interval between the adjacent degreesIII—either in a form of a temporary alteration of that degree (syntactic inflection) or the portamento gliding between the adjacent tones (pragmatic inflection that traditionally constitutes the subject of intonation in Western music theory)XLVII. Rhythmic values can fluctuate in their actual duration in the so-called “expressive timing”VII that exaggerates rhythmic contrasts by prolonging anchored tones while shortening tones in passages, ornaments, or short tones in those rhythmic figures that consist of contrasting durations—e.g., overdotting in the so-called “punctured” rhythmVIII; such flections overtake the normative ratios that govern the rhythmic divisionsVII
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