lecture series

What makes us musical animals
Vortragsfolien (PDF)
 

Abstract

Over the years it has become clear that all humans share a predisposition for music, just like we all have a capacity for language. This view is supported by a growing body of research ranging from the pioneering work of developmental psychologists Sandra Trehub and Laurel Trainor to that of neuroscientists such as Isabelle Peretz and Robert Zatorre. These studies also indicate that our capacity for music has an intimate relationship with our cognition and underlying biology, which is particularly clear when the focus is on perception rather than production.
Until relatively recently most scholars were wary of the notion that music cognition could have a biological basis. Instead music was viewed as a cultural product with no evolutionary history and no biological constraints on its manifestation. Such a view is indicative of a Western perspective on music, in which music is viewed as the preserve of professional musicians who have honed their skills through years of practise. Obviously, such notions do not fit the presence of music in all cultures and time periods, let alone other species. Rather than being something special or reserved for highly-trained individuals, there is increasing evidence that all humans share a predisposition for music in the form of musicality – defined as a spontaneous developing set of traits based on and constraint by our cognitive abilities and their underlying biology [1]. To recognise a melody and perceive the beat of music are trivial skills for most humans, but at the same time fundamental features of our musicality. Even infants and young children are already sensitive to such features, which are common across cultures. Though we are learning more and more about our own musical skills, the cognitive and biological mechanisms underlying musicality remain unclear.
In this presentation I aim to decompose the constituent components of musicality (using a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy) by focussing on one feature that has attracted considerable discussion in the recent literature: beat induction. I will discuss our recent findings in humans (adults and newborn infants; [2,3]), nonhuman primates [4,5], and avian species [6,7] using a comparative approach.

1.   Honing H, ten Cate C, Peretz I, Trehub SE (2015) Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality. Philos Trans R Soc London B Biol Sci 370: 20140088. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0088.

2.   Winkler I, Háden GP, Ladinig O, Sziller I, Honing H (2009) Newborn infants detect the beat in music. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106: 2468–2471. doi:10.1073/pnas.0809035106.

3.   Honing H (2012) Without it no music: beat induction as a fundamental musical trait. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1252: 85–91. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06402.x.

4.   Merchant H, Honing H (2014) Are non-human primates capable of rhythmic entrainment? Evidence for the gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis. Front Audit Cogn Neurosci 7: 1–8. doi:10.3389/fnins.2013.00274.

5.   Honing H, Merchant H, Háden GP, Prado L, Bartolo R (2012) Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) detect rhythmic groups in music, but not the beat. PLoS One 7: 1–10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051369.

6.   van der Aa J, Honing H, ten Cate C (2015) The perception of regularity in an isochronous stimulus in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) and humans. Behav Processes 115: 37–45. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2015.02.018.

7.   ten Cate C, Spierings M, Hubert J, Honing H (2016) Can birds perceive rhythmic patterns? A review and experiments on a songbird and a parrot species. Front Psychol 7: 1–14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00730.

Daniela Sammler (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig)

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, research on the neurocognition of music has gained a lot of insights into how the brain perceives music. Yet, our knowledge about the neural mechanisms of music production remains sparse. One aspect that has been studied particularly well in perception is musical syntax, i.e. the processing of harmonic rules in the auditory signal. The present talk will demonstrate that the notion of syntax not only applies to the auditory modality but transfers – in trained musicians – to a “grammar of musical action”. I will present a series of neuroimaging experiments that show (i) that the performance of musicians is guided by their music-syntactic knowledge – irrespective of sounds, (ii) that syntax takes priority over the selection of finger movements during piano performance, (iii) that training style (classical vs. Jazz) has an impact on syntactic motor planning, and (iv) that syntax perception and production in music overlap partly – but not fully – in the musician’s brain. Altogether, these results show how strongly musicians rely on syntax as a scaffolding that facilitates their performance and enables them to achieve the motoric proficiency that is required on stage.

01.11.2016

Subhendu Ghosh (Hindustani Classical vocalist, dramatist, music director, cultural and social activist)

see note (*) below

Abstract
In the backdrop of South Asian Classical Musical tradition fractured by partition it is interesting to understand the historical dynamics of the Music of Bengal in post 1947 period. By music I mean music as a whole that includes mainly folk music and also classical, semi-classical, modern and popular music. In the musical tradition of Bengal an important landmark is Lalan Fakir who is known as the Guru of all the Bauls. Bauls are known to be not only musicians but also the practicing philosophers. The tradition of Bauls had a remarkable impact on the post Lalan music history of Bengal, e.g. Rabindra Sangeet (the songs of Tagore). In addition to Baul, the music, which is deep in the heart of Bengal, is Bhatiali, the music of the boatmen, quite often full of sorrow. A twentieth century legend of Bengali poetry and music Kazi Nazrul Islam, known as Vidrohi Kavi or the revolutionary poet, very beautifully integrated Bhatiali, Baul and Classical/ Semi-Classical music in his songs, which has set a new tradition of popular music in Bengal. During the pre-partition colonial Bengal there were a number of poets cum music composers who gave popular songs with flavours of classical and folk music.

When British Government divided Bengal in 1905, the intelligentsia took to the streets. People like Rabindranath Tagore sang against the division of Bengal and the poetry and music as described above kept different religious communities together. In 1947 the partition of Bengal added to the discomfort of people from both eastern and western parts. Despite the fact that East Bengal remains politically separated from the west (Bengal) it has been successful in upholding the Musical Heritage, the traditions of Bauls, Bhatali and other imbibed Classical, Semi-Classical music. In this paper I am going to discuss how the people of Bengal have achieved this.

_____________

* N.B.: This event is part of the "Structure, Culture, and Cognition in Cross-Cultural Music Research" workshop, the full schedule of which you can find here

Abstract
In contrast to language, much of the music made around the world is designed to support and accompany periodic bodily movements - dance.  In a more metaphoric sense, music is also exceptional in that it "moves us" emotionally.  I will explore this topic from comparative, neurological and computational perspectives, concluding that music is specialized to engage the predictive component of our brains at both the obvious level of physical movement (dance, marching, working) but also at the level of our cognition and emotions (by evoking "aesthetic trajectories" that map onto more abstract dynamic components of cognition).  I will end by addressing the long-running debate concerning whether music is an adaptation from this perspective, concluded that this question needs to be reformulated if it is to lead to any valuable insights.

Syntax in Music and Language: A Comparative Approach and Action-Oriented Perspective
Vortragsfolien (PDF)

Abstract

It is often claimed that music and language share a process of hierarchical structure building, a mental “syntax.” Although several lines of research point to commonalities, and possibly a shared syntactic component of music and language, differences between “language syntax” and “music syntax” can also be found at several levels: conveyed meaning and the atoms of combination, for example. Instead of comparing syntax in language and music some researchers have suggested a comparison between music and phonology (“phonological syntax”), but here too, one quickly arrives at a situation of intriguing similarities and obvious differences. In this talk, I suggest different comparative approach to go beyond such a shared/distinct dichotomy in comparing language and musical “syntax” and “phonology”. First, I show that the similarity of syntax in music and language lies in the fact that hierarchically structured representations are mapped onto temporal sequences or vice versa, i.e. the problem of linearization and structure building. Second, I claim that a fruitful comparison between these two cognitive domains can benefit from taking action syntax, i.e. a grammar of action, into account. I will end with an application of the action-oriented perspective to music in the domain of rhythmic syntax, and conclude that research on rhythmic syntax – till now a neglected aspect of musical syntax – is necessary to reveal the mysterious relationship between music and language from a theoretical, psychological, neuroscientific, and evolutionary perspective.

_____________

* N.B.: Please note this talk replaces the originally-scheduled one by Elaine Chew, which the speaker has had to cancel due to personal reasons.

Iain Morley (University of Oxford)

__________

Björn Merker (independent scholar)

Without a song or a dance what are we? Multi-disciplinary approaches to the prehistory of music

__________

Our path to music and language: the vocal learning bottleneck and the powers of cultural transmission
Vortragsfolien (PDF)

Abstract (Iain Morley)

Archaeological evidence for musical activities pre-dates even the earliest-known cave art and no human culture has yet been encountered that does not practise some recognisably musical activity. Yet the human abilities to make and appreciate music have been described as “amongst the most mysterious with which [we are] endowed” (Charles Darwin, 1872) and music itself as “the supreme mystery of the science of man” (Claude Levi-Strauss, 1970).

Unlike the evolution of human language abilities, it is only recently that the origins of musical capacities have begun to receive dedicated attention, and much has remained mysterious about this ubiquitous human phenomenon, not least its prehistoric origins.

No single field of investigation can address the wide range of issues relevant to answering the question of music’s origins. This talk brings together evidence from a wide range of anthropological and human sciences, including palaeoanthropology, archaeology, neuroscience, primatology and developmental psychology, in an attempt to elucidate the nature of the foundations of music, how they have evolved, and how they are related to capabilities underlying other important human behaviours.

Biog: Dr Iain Morley researches the evolution of human cognition, and in particular the emergence of ‘modern’ human behaviours such as music, ritual, and imagery. His books include “The Prehistory of Music”, published by Oxford University Press in 2013, as well as “Becoming Human” (regarding the early evidence for ritual thought in the Palaeolithic) and “Image and Imagination” (looking at the prehistory of representational imagery), co-edited with Colin Renfrew.

He has carried out archaeological excavation work in Britain, Croatia, Moravia (Czech Republic), Italy, Greece and Libya; he is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and is based at the University of Oxford in the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography.

____________________________________________

Abstract (Bjorn Merker)

Imagine a population in which each member expresses their cognitive contents by means of strings of syllables, one string per content, randomly generated for each content, and independently so for each individual. There would, of course be utter and total mutual incomprension among members of such a population. Imagine then that someone told you that if each member of this population simply repeated what they heard and remembered of the incomprehensible utterances of others and repeated this to their offspring, the nonsense babbling of this population would over generations converge on a population-wide shared vocabulary and efficient grammar, and this without a trace of Darwinian selection or differential reinforcement of outcomes. You might think the claim to be preposterous, but you would be wrong, as demonstrated by computer simulations of just such populations of learning agents by Simon Kirby and colleagues at Edinburgh.

In my presentation I will explain the mechanism behind this apparently miraculous power of pure cultural transmission, and explore its implications for our conception of the origins of music and language. I will do so  by outlining how so called vocal production learning, a specialized capacity spottily distributed across the animal kingdom, supplies a mechanism for implementing the iterated learning paradigm in nature rather than in silico. Having done so, I will suggest that this paradigm explicating the formal powers of purely cultural transmission supplies the key to the consilience of the humanities and the natural sciences by disclosing the inner workings of cultural traditions.

N.B.: for more details of this event, please see English version of page

Abstract
There is increasing interest in music and empathy, and with the ways in which music can draw listeners and active participants into forms of engagement with one another. The idea of empathy originally arose in the context of visual art, to account for the ways in which observers can be drawn into the world of a work of art, but quickly developed into a powerful and more general psychological concept. The definition of empathy, however, remains controversial, and the frameworks that have been proposed to account for it range from neuroscience through psychology to sociology and cultural studies. In this lecture I explore the ways in which a broad concept of empathy might provide a fruitful way to understand how it is that listeners engage with the ‘virtual worlds’ that music affords, and what kind of extended musical consciousness they (and we) might experience.

Abstract
In this talk I will focus on the similarity of temporal structures in music and speech and the extent to which they may emerge from similar neural dynamics and repose on similar physical and neurophysiological principles. I will show that musical temporal structures can influence linguistic structures at several temporal scales and that experience with temporal structures also affects perception/production of speech. I will finish my talk by showing the implication of this approach in terms of language rehabilitation in different pathologies.

The audio-visual music performer: Intermodal interactions in evaluation processes
Vortragsfolien (PDF)

Abstract

The visual component of music performance as experienced in a live concert is of central importance for the appreciation of music performance. However, up until now the influence of the visual component on the audience’s evaluation of music performance has been investigated unsystematically.

I will start with some historical examples to demonstrate the visual modality as an integral part of music performance over centuries. Reports on concerts of famous virtuosos of the 19th century such as Franz Liszt are a comprehensive source. These descriptions raise two questions: First, how can the influence of the visual component on music evaluation processes be quantified? Second, which theoretical model could give an explanation for potential evaluation differences?

Musical examples from classical and popular music will demonstrate possible methods for providing an answer to both questions.  
Against the theoretical background of social interaction theory, I will finally argue that performance evaluation can only be understood as an interaction between expectations of audience’s sub-classes and observable behavior of groups of performers.  A model of music performance elaboration can be an alternative to models of musical communication.

“As time goes by” - Perception of tempo and time in music
Vortragsfolien (PDF)

Abstract

Starting point of the lecture is W. R. Talsma’s theory of a „metric“ interpretation of historical metronome marks. This theory postulates that today’s performances of compositions from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are wrong: fast movements are performed twice as fast as they were intended, because of a rapid change of time perception in the 19th century as a consequence of industrialization. This theory raises a lot of questions which will be discussed in the lecture. With respect to time perception in music, the question is whether changes in technical processes, in transport techniques etc. really changed tempo in music. If so, why was this change never discussed in books on music theory or musical practice? It can be shown that Talsma’s theory is wrong and that differences in the choice of tempi between performances of the 19th and 20th century derive from different interpretations of the expressive character of the compositions.

The second part of the lecture deals with experiments and theories on (musical) time perception. Not only conductors and performers of music can develop precise ideas of performance tempi and keep them in mind but also listeners, even if the music is unfamiliar to them. This corroborates theories of internal „clocks“ in the human brain, developed e.g. by Ernst Pöppel. However, other empirical data show strong contextual influences on time perception in music, especially on perception of rhythm and long term durations. The theory of embodied cognition links human thinking and emotions to bodily experiences and seems to be good framework for the explanation of phenomena in musical time perception.

Abstract

What makes our experience of music possible – and effortless – is an intricate puzzle of cognitive processes, involving a subtle interplay of what psychologists refer to as bottom-up and top-down components. The key concept of expectation can be construed at the centre of a complex feedback loop between these components, relaying information in both directions, and at different time scales. This framework holds not just for music we hear (an exogenous/bottom-up process) but also for music we create in our minds (endogenous/top-down).

One mode of acquiring musical knowledge is implicit learning, which gradually gets to shape our sensory preferences, e.g. for certain combinations of simultaneous notes over others (consonant over dissonant chords  – or indeed, in some contexts, vice-versa!), and also our unfolding expectations relating to e.g. what musical event might come next. These expectations form the core of a set of intuitions that have been formalised as models of musical structure, most notably Schenkerian analysis. Such models can inspire quantifiable predictions about the temporal nature of our expectation – for instance, with regards to the moment in time when we feel a piece is "beginning to end". The sum of these intuitions endows us with a template that on the one hand enables us to make sense of music that we hear; but equally, also to (re)create music in our own minds – a process known as musical imagery, which shares commonalities with music perception not only at the cognitive level (e.g. both can be conjectured to stem from a single generative model) but also at the neuronal level.

In this talk, I will describe three distinct studies from the Dresden Music Cognition Lab, that address – using behavioural and neuroimaging methods – individual elements of the expectation-mediated loop outlined above, namely (i) the (local) perception of consonance and dissonance; (ii) the (non-local) perception of hierarchical musical structures; and (iii) the role of harmonic function in imagined music. I will then attempt to integrate these findings into the larger questions of how expectation guides our listening and imagery of music, and how the brain is wired to make these processes run smoothly in the background.

Abstract
What is it about music that makes people want to move? And why does if feel so good? In this lecture, we will cover the musical, cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying pleasure from musical rhythm, with a focus on groove. Groove is psychologically defined as a musical quality associated with a pleasurable desire to move, and has been shown to affect both reward and motor functioning, in the body and the brain. We will learn about why certain kinds of rhythmic patterns - such as syncopations and off-beat rhythms - have such a powerful effect on us. Finally, we’ll consider the implications of the pleasure of rhythm for social interaction and discuss the potential evolutionary purpose of moving together in time.

28.04.

Jonna Vuoskoski
University of Oxford

The intriguing case of sad music
-> slides

05.05.

Richard Widdess
SOAS University of London

Cognitive Research and South Asian Music
-> slides
-> lecture text

lecture recording from 13th April 2015

12.05

Ian Cross
University of Cambridge
 

The nature of music
-> slides

19.05.

Fernando Bravo
TU Dresden

What can film-music reveal about human emotion?

lecture recording from 19th May 2015

02.06.

Rolf Bader
Universität Hamburg
 

Models and findings of synchronization in musical acoustics and music psychology

09.06.

Michael Polth
Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim

Musikalische Syntax und Harmonik in der Wiener Klassik

 slides
(for students only, password requiered, please ask for it)
 

16.06,

Sebastian Klotz
Universität Leipzig

`ThoughtConductors' Towards a non-reductionist music cognition research

-> slides

abstract

Given the complexity of human auditory perception, models that rely on information theory concepts have been substituted by more ecologically nuanced perspectives on listening as a culturally situated practice.

This presentation argues that empirically driven research which has exhausted the strictly functionalist paradigm (input/functional localization of cortical activation) desperately seeks input that allows it to approach more volatile constructs such as autobiographical memory and musical empathy.

A project by the London based art collective artEmergent which is called "Thought Conductor" will serve as backdrop for this critical assessment.

Bibliographical references:

• „Klang als epistemische Ressource und als operativer Prozess“, in: Axel Volmar, Jens Schröter (Hg.),  Auditive Medienkulturen. Techniken des Hörens und Praktiken der Klanggestaltung, Bielefeld 2013 (Kultur- und Medientheorie), S. 189-205.
• “Rhythm and Consensuality. Extending Gumbrecht’s Model to Music, Cognition and Action Studies”, in: Veronika Busch, Kathrin Schlemmer, Clemens Wöllner (eds.), Wahrnehmung - Erkenntnis -Vermittlung. Musikwissenschaftliche Brückenschläge. Festschrift für Wolfgang Auhagen, Hildesheim 2013 (Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft, 78), pp. 104-111.

• “Musical Listening. From Feature Extraction to Ecological Models” in: Gianmario Borio (ed.), Musical Listening in the Age of Technological Reproducibility, Farnham: Ashgate (in Druck vor. 2015) (Musical Cultures of the Twentieth Century Series).

23.06.

Hans-Christian Jabusch
Hochschule für Musik Dresden

Erwerb und Verlust feinmotorischer Kontrolle bei Musikern

1st paper
2dt paper
3rd paper

30.06.

Markus Neuwirth
KU Leuven

On the perception of musical form

-> slides
(for students only, password requiered, please ask for it)
 

07.07.

Oliver Schwab-Felisch
TU Berlin

Crossing the Gap: Bedingungen einer kognitiven Musiktheorie

-> slides
-> lecture text
(for students only, password requiered, please ask for it)

14.07.

Dan Tidhar
University of Cambridge
City University London

Big data musicology

paper
website
 

21.07.

Uli Reich
Freie Universität Berlin

Language as music distorted by semantics