Not By Art Alone: Error, Bias, and Chaos in Musical Evolution

Musical change is an example of cultural evolution. This chapter, to be included in "Music in Human Experience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Musical Species" edited by Johnathan Friedmann, outlines the interplay between cultural values and cognitive biases within an evolutionary framework. This also includes an introduction to concepts specific to cultural evolution, such as guided variation and constrained mutation. Juliette Blevins' Evolutionary Phonology framework is extended to music, treating pitch systems as phonological systems, subject to similar cognitive biases that result in similar patterns of change. Cultural values surrounding music then act upon the output of lower-level "phonological" processes, both as selective forces and as influences on musicians' "guided variation." Because the resulting patterns show some hallmarks of chaotic behavior, the chapter concludes by advocating an agent-based modeling approach.

Berg’s Musical Apprenticeship, 1899–1911

In Chapter 2 Berg’s early musical activities are outlined, and his musical studies with Arnold Schoenberg are examined in detail. His first efforts as a composer were songs, some thirty-three of these composed before he had formal training in music. His studies with Schoenberg began in 1904, beginning with exercises in counterpoint and fugue, then progressing to composition per se. In these disciplines Schoenberg emphasized a mastery of traditional musical forms and materials. The emphasis on time-honored forms had a lasting impact on Berg’s later music, and Schoenberg’s philosophy concerning musical evolution reinforced Berg’s own musical instincts. Berg’s early compositions—songs, piano works, and his Opp. 1–3—are discussed and described to show their relation to contemporary musical developments and Berg’s impulse toward originality. Whenever possible Berg’s own descriptions and analyses of his early music are cited, and Berg’s approach to “atonal” harmony is described.

Measuring the cultural evolution of music: Cross-cultural and cross-genre case studies

In this article I apply methods for measuring the cultural evolution of music to four diverse case studies for which the history of musical evolution has already been qualitatively documented: 1) the divergence of the Scottish 17th c. Lady Cassiles Lilt into nearly unrecognizable 20th c. American descendants, 2) the merging of work songs from distant prefectures into the Japanese folk song Esashi Oiwake, 3) the simultaneous performance of vestigial, inaudible 1,000-year-old Chinese melodies and their radically changed descendants in the Japanese gagaku piece Seigaiha, and 4) the legal cases finding George Harrison's My Sweet Lord (1970) and Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams' Blurred Lines (2013) liable for copyright infringement. Although the precise mechanisms differ and absolute rates of evolution vary almost 400-fold within and between these case studies, several patterns are consistent with the predictions of previous research. These patterns include: 1) the relative ease of mutations to nearby pitches, 2) the relative predominance of insertions/deletions over substitutions, 3) the relative stability of functional notes (e.g., rhythmically stressed vs. unstressed), and 4) the relative stability of written over oral traditions. Both increases and decreases in complexity were observed, with no clear trend favouring one direction.

Sequence alignment of folk song melodies reveals cross-cultural mechanisms of musical evolution

Culture, like genes, evolves, but the existence of cross-culturally universal mechanisms of cultural evolution is debated. As a diverse but cross-culturally universal phenomenon, music may provide a novel domain to test for the existence of such mechanisms. Folk song melodies are culturally transmitted sequences of notes that change over time, and the generation and transmission of these melodies may be subject to similar cognitive and acoustic/physical constraints, such that general laws of melodic evolution may apply across cultures. Modeling changes in musical notes as analogous to the process of molecular sequence evolution allows us to quantitatively test such hypotheses. Here we adapt sequence alignment algorithms from molecular genetics to analyze musical evolution in a sample of 10,062 melodies from musically divergent Japanese and English folk song traditions. Our analysis identifies 328 pairs of highly related melodies, within which rates of change vary in ways predicted by a neutral theory of melodic evolution in which note changes are more likely when they have smaller impacts on a song's melody. Specifically: 1) notes are most likely to change to neighboring notes, 2) rarer notes are more likely to change, and 3) notes with stronger functional roles are less likely to change. These results are consistent across samples despite using different scales with different probabilities of change between notes, suggesting they may apply universally. Our findings demonstrate that even a creative art form such as music is subject to evolutionary constraints analogous to those governing the evolution of genes, languages, and other domains of culture.

CantoCore: A new cross-cultural song classification scheme

Classification of organisms and languages has long provided the foundation for studying biological and cultural history, but there is still no accepted scheme for classifying songs cross-culturally. The best candidate, Lomax and Grauer’s “Cantometrics” coding scheme, did not spawn a large following due, in part, to concerns about its reliability. We present here a new classification scheme, called “CantoCore”, that is inspired by Cantometrics but that emphasizes its “core” structural characters rather than the more subjective characters of performance style. Using both schemes to classify the 30 songs from the Cantometrics Consensus Tape, we found that CantoCore appeared to be approximately 80% more reliable than Cantometrics. Nevertheless, Cantometrics still demonstrated significant reliability for all but its instrumental characters. Future multidisciplinary applications of CantoCore and Cantometrics to the cross-cultural study of musical similarity, musical evolution, musical universals, and the relationship between music and culture will provide the true test of each scheme’s value.

The Voice

Voice and singing are fundamental to music. Scales and content reflect our personal culture. Something beautiful and inspiring to one person may be a boring cacophony to another. Viewing musical evolution from the perspective of culture is therefore varied and individual. Input from science is generally less obvious, except for changes generated from acoustics of buildings, broadcasting, and electronic sound equipment. Medical studies reveal how we form sounds and tone quality, and modern electronic signal processing shows the complexity of the harmonic content of singing. The changes between sweetness, harshness, carrying power, and so on, all depend on not just volume, but the fundamental note and its harmonics, plus all the other frequencies generated in our vocalization. One fundamental may have 50 or more other frequencies. This signal processing tool is invaluable for understanding voice production.

The Evolution of Music through Culture and Science

Music is an international key aspect of humanity which impacts life, from love songs to religion, politics, and warfare. Changes in culture and developments in science drove musical progress from printing and distribution to instrumental improvements, innovation, and the acoustics of buildings and concert halls. Every aspect increased public demand and changed compositional styles, plus heightened the need for virtuosic star performers. Conversely, the attempts to record and distribute music inspired the growth of recording systems, microphones, and electronic amplifiers, which has resulted in the electronically dominated world as we now know it. The book maps these continuous changes and how they have influenced musical evolution, and it not only explores the past, but attempts to predict the near future in terms of the potential for new electronic instruments and the ongoing shifts between recording and broadcasting techniques (tapes, vinyl, CDs, streaming, etc.), together with their impact on, and the survival of, the music industry. Examples of changes for keyboard, string, and brass instruments, current understanding of voice production, hearing, and brain processing of music are all discussed. This book is for those interested in all aspects of music, from classical to jazz and pop. It does not require either scientific or musical backgrounds, but it will enhance enjoyment of music, and reveal the probable future of musical trends.