Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:04:15.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Unravelling the origins of musicality: Beyond music as an epiphenomenon of language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2021

Henkjan Honing*
Affiliation:
Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [email protected]://www.mcg.uva.nl/hh

Abstract

The two target articles address the origins of music in complementary ways. However, both proposals focus on overt musical behaviour, largely ignoring the role of perception and cognition, and they blur the boundaries between the potential origins of language and music. To resolve this, an alternative research strategy is proposed that focuses on the core cognitive components of musicality.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albouy, P., Benjamin, L., Morillon, B., & Zatorre, R. J. (2020). Distinct sensitivity to spectrotemporal modulation supports brain asymmetry for speech and melody. Science, 367(6481), 16. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1252826.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arbib, M. A. (Ed.). (2013). Language, music, and the brain: A mysterious relationship. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. John Murray.Google Scholar
Fitch, W. T. (2013). Musical protolanguage: Darwin's theory of language evolution revisited. In Bolhuis, J. J. & Everaert, M. (Eds.), Birdsong, speech, and language: Exploring the evolution of mind and brain (pp. 489503). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fitch, W. T. (2018). Four principles of biomusicology. In Honing, H. (Ed.), The origins of musicality (pp. 2348). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modularity of mind. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/2184717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honing, H. (2018a). Musicality as an upbeat to music: Introduction and research agenda. In Honing, H. (Ed.), The origins of musicality (pp. 320). MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honing, H. (Ed.). (2018b). The origins of musicality. The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honing, H., ten Cate, C., Peretz, I., & Trehub, S. E. (2015). Without it no music: Cognition, biology and evolution of musicality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 370(1664), 20140088. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0088.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Margulis, E. H. (2019). The psychology of music: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., Knox, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens-Jones, D., Atwood, S., … Glowacki, L. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468), 957970. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0868.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peretz, I., Vuvan, D. T., Armony, J. L., Lagrois, M.-É., & Armony, J. L. (2018). Neural overlap in processing music and speech. In Honing, H. (Ed.), The origins of musicality (Vol. 370, pp. 205220). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0090.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. Norton.Google Scholar
Rentfrow, P. J., & Levitin, D. J. (Eds.). (2019). Foundations in music psychology: Theory and research. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Savage, P. E., Brown, S., Sakai, E., & Currie, T. E. (2015). Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(29), 89878992. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1414495112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trehub, S. E., Weiss, M. W., & Cirelli, L. K. (2019). Musicality across the lifespan. In Rentfrow, P. J. & Levitin, D. J. (Eds.), Foundations in music psychology: Theory and research (pp. 265303). The MIT Press.Google Scholar