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Evolution of Tonal Organization in Music Optimizes Neural Mechanisms in Symbolic Encoding of Perceptual Reality. Part-2: Ancient to Seventeenth Century.

ABSTRACT: This paper reveals the way in which musical pitch works as a peculiar form of cognition that reflects upon the organization of the surrounding world as perceived by majority of music users within a socio-cultural formation. Part-1 of this paper described the origin of tonal organization from verbal speech, its progress from indefinite to definite pitch, and the emergence of two main harmonic orders: heptatonic and pentatonic, each characterized by its own method of handling tension at both domains, of tonal and social organization. Part-2, here, completes the line of historic development from Antiquity to seventeenth century. Vast archeological data is used to identify the perception of music structures that tells apart the temple/palace music of urban civilizations and the folk music of village cultures. The "mega-pitch-set" (MPS) organization is found to constitute the principal contribution of a math-based music theory to a new diatonic order. All ramifications for psychology of music are discussed in detail. "Non-octave hypermode" is identified as a peculiar homogenous type of MPS, typical for plainchant. The origin of chromaticism is thoroughly examined as an earmark of "art-music" that opposes earlier forms of folk music. The role of aesthetic emotions in formation of chromatic alteration is defined. The development of chromatic system is traced throughout history, highlighting its modern implementation in "hemiolic modes." The connection between tonal organization in music and spatial organization in pictorial art is established in the Baroque culture, and then tracked back to prehistoric times. Both are shown to present a form of abstraction of environmental topographic schemes, and music is proposed as the primary medium for its cultivation through the concept of pitch. The comparison of stages of tonal organization and typologies of musical texture is used to define the overall course of tonal evolution. Tonal organization of pitch reflects the culture of thinking, adopted as a standard to optimize individual perception of reality within a social group in a way optimal for one's success, thereby setting the conventions of intellectual and emotional intelligence.

SUBMITTER: Nikolsky A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4813086 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evolution of Tonal Organization in Music Optimizes Neural Mechanisms in Symbolic Encoding of Perceptual Reality. Part-2: Ancient to Seventeenth Century.

Nikolsky Aleksey A

Frontiers in psychology 20160330

This paper reveals the way in which musical pitch works as a peculiar form of cognition that reflects upon the organization of the surrounding world as perceived by majority of music users within a socio-cultural formation. Part-1 of this paper described the origin of tonal organization from verbal speech, its progress from indefinite to definite pitch, and the emergence of two main harmonic orders: heptatonic and pentatonic, each characterized by its own method of handling tension at both domai ...[more]

PMID: 27065893

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Project description:This paper reveals the way in which musical pitch works as a peculiar form of cognition that reflects upon the organization of the surrounding world as perceived by majority of music users within a socio-cultural formation. The evidence from music theory, ethnography, archeology, organology, anthropology, psychoacoustics, and evolutionary biology is plotted against experimental evidence. Much of the methodology for this investigation comes from studies conducted within the territory of the former USSR. To date, this methodology has remained solely confined to Russian speaking scholars. A brief overview of pitch-set theory demonstrates the need to distinguish between vertical and horizontal harmony, laying out the framework for virtual music space that operates according to the perceptual laws of tonal gravity. Brought to life by bifurcation of music and speech, tonal gravity passed through eleven discrete stages of development until the onset of tonality in the seventeenth century. Each stage presents its own method of integration of separate musical tones into an auditory-cognitive unity. The theory of "melodic intonation" is set forth as a counterpart to harmonic theory of chords. Notions of tonality, modality, key, diatonicity, chromaticism, alteration, and modulation are defined in terms of their perception, and categorized according to the way in which they have developed historically. Tonal organization in music, and perspective organization in fine arts are explained as products of the same underlying mental process. Music seems to act as a unique medium of symbolic representation of reality through the concept of pitch. Tonal organization of pitch reflects the culture of thinking, adopted as a standard within a community of music users. Tonal organization might be a naturally formed system of optimizing individual perception of reality within a social group and its immediate environment, setting conventional standards of intellectual and emotional intelligence.

Project description: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.

Project description:BackgroundKrummhübel (after 1945, Karpacz) in the Sudety Mountains (now SW Poland) was called "the village of pharmacists". At the end of the seventeenth century, there were 57 households, of which about 40 were inhabited by herbalists. Krummhübel herbalists were the first in the Sudety region who applied medicinal mixtures for the treatment of various diseases (using, among others, plants, oils, minerals and even viper venom) in contrast to previous herbalists who only indicated the use of individual plant species for specific diseases. Riesengebirge (in Polish Karkonosze) potions were sold in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, and some of them could even be purchased in Scandinavia and England. The purpose of this paper is an ethnopharmacological analysis of historical texts of herbalists from Krummhübel. Based on their recipes, we analysed the use reports of drugs. Recently, research on ethnobotany and ethnopharmacological analyses of historical materials or egodocuments related to formulations used in folk medicine have become an important source of acquiring knowledge about new medicines.MethodsBased on 46 recipes of Krummhübel herbalists re-written by Reitzig (1943), we analysed the use reports of drugs which included plant taxa and other constituents such as animal formulations, fungi, inorganic and organic substances and minerals as well as tinctures (with alcohol/spirit) and elixirs (without alcohol/spirit). For each usage mentioned in the text, we recorded (i) the putative botanical identity of the taxon; (ii) the plant family or origin of other than the plant constituent; (iii) the reported plant part; (iv) the number of the recipe; (v) the name of the recipe; (vi) the vernacular name of ingredient; (vii) the described symptom, ailment or specific use; (viii) our modern (viz. biomedical) interpretation of the described symptom or ailment; (ix) the mode of administration; and (x) the category of use under which we filed the specific use. We also cross-checked the medicinal plants of Krummhübel herbalists with the species described in old manuscripts and regional surveys and compared their use with contemporary plant use.ResultsThe paper introduces the generated database comprising 348 use reports of 46 drugs based on 70 plant taxa and other constituents. Besides, we address patterns such as the frequent recommendation of Fabaceae herbs for respiratory system issue and gynaecology and Asteraceae for respiratory system and cardiovascular problems. Gastrointestinal use reports are based on Asphodelaceae, Burseraceae and Rosaceae species.ConclusionsRemedies that lost importance over time as well as drugs used for diseases now controlled by conventional medicine may be interesting starting points for research on herbal medicine and drug discovery. It seems to be important to attempt to reproduce therapeutic mixtures from the preserved recipes of Krummhübel herbalists, which offers an opportunity to learn more about the real effects of the former medicines and their therapeutic activity. The obtained data can also be used to search for new drugs.

Project description:Post-tonal music often poses perceptual and cognitive challenges for listeners, potentially related to the use of relatively uncommon and unfamiliar musical material and compositional processes. As a basic compositional device, repetition affects memory for music and is structured by composers in very different ways across tonal and post-tonal musical repertoires. Of particular concern is whether post-tonal music exhibits mnemonic affordances that allow listeners to experience a sense of global coherence, and whether repetition correlates strongly with aesthetic judgment. Although previous research suggests that repetition impacts aesthetic preference, empirical research has not mapped out the relationship between repetition and aesthetic judgments across a broad set of post-tonal music. Presenting 14 excerpts, grouped into three categories: tonal, modernist, and post-1970, we observed that indications of repetitions in the music for a group of 60 listeners, with and without musical training, showed significant periods of interindividual synchronization. Aesthetic judgments were assessed by means of ratings for the following parameters: familiarity with the piece, confidence of repetition responses, judgments of affordances for easy listening, coherence, similarity of moments, and recognition, as well as listeners' liking and interest. A principal component analysis (PCA) on the joint question data and the repetition responses suggested that two factors account for 92% of variance in the data. These factors were interpreted as dominated by aesthetic judgment and repetition strength. Linear mixed-effects regression indicated that repetition strength generally differed across excerpt category, with modernist excerpts featuring lower repetition strength compared to both post-1970 and tonal excerpts. Aesthetic preference, on the other hand, was lower for excerpts in both the modernist and post-1970 categories when compared to tonal excerpts. The analysis did not reveal difference in response behavior for repetition responses as a function of musical training, though it indicated higher preference of modernist excerpts with increasing levels of musical training. Overall, the results suggest that the two factors, aesthetic judgment and repetition strength, act as independent determinants in the experience of post-tonal music.

Project description:Sleep-mediated overnight consolidation has been found to facilitate perceptual learning by promoting learners' generalization across talkers in their perception of novel segmental categories. Lexical tone is characterized by high variability across talkers, and displays dynamic change over time. For this reason, it remains unclear whether a similar effect of overnight consolidation would be found for perceptual learning of novel tonal contrasts. Thus, this study aims to examine whether overnight consolidation facilitates talker-independent learning of lexical tones in the identification and discrimination of novel Cantonese level tones by Mandarin listeners. Two groups of Mandarin listeners were perceptually trained either in the morning or in the evening. Listeners were trained in a tone identification (ID) task with feedback using stimuli produced by a trained talker. Their post-training changes and generalization to a novel talker were then tested in the ID and AX discrimination tasks using stimuli produced by trained and untrained talkers in three posttests following training: immediately after training, 12-hour delay, and 24-hour delay. While the evening group slept between the first and second posttests, the morning group did not. The accuracy rates in the ID task showed that the evening group showed an improved trend, predicted by their individual sleep time, in identifying the level tones produced by both the trained and untrained talkers; in contrast, the morning group showed a declining trend. The d-prime scores in the AX discrimination task did not show different patterns between the two groups. The finding of sleep-related identification changes over time suggests that overnight consolidation might have facilitated tone learning of stimuli produced by the novel talker and eventually facilitated the formation of a more talker-independent representation of novel tone categories in long-term memory. The results are discussed in light of the features of lexical tones to shed light on the mechanism of phonetic learning.

Dataset Information

Evolution of Tonal Organization in Music Optimizes Neural Mechanisms in Symbolic Encoding of Perceptual Reality. Part-2: Ancient to Seventeenth Century.

Publications

Evolution of Tonal Organization in Music Optimizes Neural Mechanisms in Symbolic Encoding of Perceptual Reality. Part-2: Ancient to Seventeenth Century.

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