# Music as biology



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

This looks like an interesting course from Duke University. *This link* will take you to the course syllabus. Since we often talk about this stuff here on the forum, there may be some actual facts (!) here.

It's free, as always.


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## soni (Jul 3, 2018)

This does look very interesting indeed. However I do hope people don't start using it to try to do the whole "atonal music is crap" thing all over again.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

That's interesting. When I was in college I took a course, The Physics and Psychoacoustics of Sound, which addressed a lot of these issues. Week 5 in this Duke course would be really interesting. Fascinating subject. This s free? I may have to go through it.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

soni said:


> This does look very interesting indeed. However I do hope people don't start using it to try to do the whole "atonal music is crap" thing all over again.


You could probably conclude that atonal music is unnatural from these sort of things. The people who then conclude its crap (directly from this) are probably, somewhere along the line, invoking the naturalistic fallacy.

But it does suggest that there is something inherently 'special' to tonal-like systems of music-making that comes out of the human experience and has nothing to do whatsoever with Europen culture which seems to be a common line of attack by the pro-atonal group.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> You could probably conclude that atonal music is unnatural from these sort of things. The people who then conclude its crap (directly from this) are probably, somewhere along the line, invoking the naturalistic fallacy.
> 
> ....


Of course, _all_ art is unnatural. It's an artificial thing, created by a human being. To qualify as a human being one must have a certain degree of consciousness, awareness of self. This is the stuff that we traded instinct for, somewhere in our past, in order to have the ability to contemplate our own demise. Animals seem to operate on a level quite distinct from "conscious choice"; we suspect they do not contemplate death, or their own being-ness, for that matter. They certainly don't talk about it. And they don't create art.

Perhaps Aristotle thought art was (or should be) "an imitation of nature", and perhaps a lot of art is just that. Still, the imitation aint the real thing.

There may be some biological basis in tonality. There certainly is physics behind laws of vibrations and frequencies which lead to the "naturalness" of the pentatonic scale, and all that sort of stuff. But still -- a musical composition, of any sort, tonal or non-tonal or concrete noise arrangement or silence -- remains a work of human endeavor, an artifice that does not exist in the natural world. When we hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony we are listening to something that did not exist in nature and was created by a conscious being. When we hear Xenakis's _Akrata_, we are listening to something that did not exist in nature and was created by a conscious being. So it goes, for each and every art work.

Even "found art" depends upon the natural object (and that could be bird song, musically) to be designated as art, again by a consciousness.

So, it seems foolish to argue against atonality as unnatural -- unless one is willing to promote the same about Bach's B Minor Mass, Mozart's _Figaro_, and Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony No. 2.


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## soni (Jul 3, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> So, it seems foolish to argue against atonality as unnatural -- unless one is willing to promote the same about Bach's B Minor Mass, Mozart's _Figaro_, and Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony No. 2.


Well, certainly atonal music is _more_ unnatural than tonal music, which explains why most people dislike it. However, that does not need to be a barrier for appreciating it for those who are interested (such as myself). I know from experience that any feeling of the music being "unnatural" disappears after repeated listening.

However we should also avoid the reverse argument. Some people also have the idea that the more natural some music is, the more superficial it must be. This argument appears relatively often (applied to pop) and is equally demeaning of people's music tastes.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

soni said:


> This does look very interesting indeed. However I do hope people don't start using it to try to do the whole "atonal music is crap" thing all over again.


I am a bit disgusted that this is the first comment in a thread about science. Put your agenda elsewhere.


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## soni (Jul 3, 2018)

Fabulin said:


> Put your agenda elsewhere.


Of course. No need to get personal though.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Fabulin said:


> I am a bit disgusted that this is the first comment in a thread about science. Put your agenda elsewhere.


Really, disgusted?  May I ask what soni said that was so offensive to you?


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> Of course, _all_ art is unnatural. It's an artificial thing, created by a human being. To qualify as a human being one must have a certain degree of consciousness, awareness of self. This is the stuff that we traded instinct for, somewhere in our past, in order to have the ability to contemplate our own demise. Animals seem to operate on a level quite distinct from "conscious choice"; we suspect they do not contemplate death, or their own being-ness, for that matter. They certainly don't talk about it. And they don't create art.
> 
> Perhaps Aristotle thought art was (or should be) "an imitation of nature", and perhaps a lot of art is just that. Still, the imitation aint the real thing.
> 
> ...


It might have helped for me to be more specific; my comment was meant to say, as Soni pointed out, that atonal music is more unnatural than tonal music. I presumed that this was sort of contextually understood because, as you rightfully pointed out, to call any sort of music natural isn't really accurate so discussions of certain music being 'natural' or 'unnatural ' is only meaningful within the context of a comparison.


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