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Do Animals Have an Innate Sense of Music?
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Hermit Thrush |
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In the last half-century, Judy Collins has sung with humpback whales and CDs with titles like “Sounds of the Rainforest” have flown off store shelves. The business of “natural music” is booming.
But are these soothing sounds truly music? Or are they simply biological functions of the animals that create them? A recent Science article suggests that not only are natural sounds such as whale and bird songs music, but that their songs may be part of a “universal music” that provides an intuitive musical concept to many animals—including humans. “We can look at the evidence and we can give more credit to animals,” said article co-author Jelle Atema, a biology professor at Boston University who has studied prehistoric flutes. “And we can look at humans and be less impressed with humans.”
The similarities between human and animal sounds and the innate desire to create music that the similarities suggest is a topic now being explored by the evolving field of biomusicology. SOUND OR MUSIC? There seems to be little question that nature can create aesthetically pleasing sounds. Mozart, for example, rewrote a passage from the last movement of his Piano Concerto in G Major to match the song of his starling. The bird’s song, biomusicologists argue, was music before being “composed” by Mozart. However, the definition of “music, ” cautioned Ron Hoy, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, should be examined thoroughly before being used to describe particular sounds. Although the term “music” has been liberally applied—to composer John Cage’s “4'33''”,4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence, for example —Hoy argues that all concepts of music return to the human view of what is or is not “musical”
“A whole generation of ’60s hippies altered their minds listening to whale songs, ” said Hoy. “To human ears, they’re gorgeous.” But do animals purposefully create these aesthetically pleasing sounds? Atema argues that this possibility should be given serious consideration. Just as our ancestors labored over their musical instruments, animals work at their own musical creations, he said. “ [Humpback whales] spend a huge amount of energy and time making music, ” said Atema. Hoy noted, however, that some scientists argue that so-called musical sounds created by animals serve only a biological function. “I think it’s completely open as to whether animals experience music the way that we do, ”said Hoy. Because animals’ cognitive abilities have not been fully understood, their creations can only be filtered through human ears and emotions. MUSIC: NOT JUST A HUMAN LANGUAGE Biomusicologists argue that not only are the sounds of some animals pleasing, but they are also composed with the same musical language that humans use. Whales, for example, use many of the musical concepts found in human music, including similar rhythms, phrase lengths, and song structure. These similarities, the Science writers maintain, “prove that these marine mammals are inveterate composers. ” The writers also point to birds as musicians, noting that bird songs follow rhythmic patterns and pitches that are in tune with human music. Birds not only create vocal sound, they point out, some also add a percussion instrument to their songs. Citing these similarities, as well as the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal flutes examined by Atema, the Science article suggest that there may be a “universal music”: one that unites all composers—human and animal. The “impenetrable vagueness” of music, they conclude, “seems to signal that the roots of music lie closer to our ancient lizard brain…that music has a more ancient origin even than human language.”
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