Why do people listen to music? Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed numerous functions that listening to music might fulfill. However, different theoretical approaches, different methods, and different samples have left a heterogeneous picture regarding the number and nature of musical functions. Moreover, there remains no agreement about the underlying dimensions of these functions. Part one of the paper reviews the research contributions that have explicitly referred to musical functions. It is concluded that a comprehensive investigation addressing the basic dimensions underlying the plethora of functions of music listening is warranted. Part two of the paper presents an empirical investigation of hundreds of functions that could be extracted from the reviewed contributions. These functions were distilled to 129 non-redundant functions that were then rated by 834 respondents. Principal component analysis suggested three distinct underlying dimensions: People listen to music to regulate arousal and mood, to achieve self-awareness, and as an expression of social relatedness. The first and second dimensions were judged to be much more important than the third—a result that contrasts with the idea that music has evolved primarily as a means for social cohesion and communication. The implications of these results are discussed in light of theories on the origin and the functionality of music listening and also for the application of musical stimuli in all areas of psychology and for research in music cognition.

In contemplating the function and origin of music, a number of scholars have considered whether music might be an evolutionary adaptation. This article reviews the basic arguments related to evolutionary claims for music. Although evolutionary theories about music remain wholly speculative, musical behaviors satisfy a number of basic conditions, which suggests that there is indeed merit in pursuing possible evolutionary accounts.

The traditional rules of voice-leading in Western music are explicated using experimentally established perceptual principles. Six core principles are shown to account for the majority of voice-leading rules given in historical and contemporary music theory tracts. These principles are treated in a manner akin to axioms in a formal system from which the traditional rules of voice-leading are derived. Nontraditional rules arising from the derivation are shown to predict formerly unnoticed aspects of voice-leading practice. In addition to the core perceptual principles, several auxiliary principles are described. These auxiliary principles are occasionally linked to voice-leading practice and may be regarded as compositional "options" that shape the music-making in perceptually unique ways. It is suggested that these auxiliary principles distinguish different types of part writing, such as polyphony, homophony, and close harmony. A theory is proposed to account for the aesthetic origin of voice-leading practices.

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A hedonic theory of music and sadness is proposed. Some listeners report that nominally sad music genuinely makes them feel sad. It is suggested that, for these listeners, sad affect is evoked through a combination of empathetic responses to sad acoustic features, learned associations, and cognitive rumination. Among those listeners who report sad feelings, some report an accompanying positive affect, whereas others report the experience to be solely negative. Levels of the hormone prolactin increase when sad – producing a consoling psychological effect suggestive of a homeostatic function. It is proposed that variations in prolactin levels might account for the variability in individual hedonic responses. Specifically, it is conjectured that high prolactin concentrations are associated with pleasurable music-induced sadness, whereas low prolactin concentrations are associated with unpleasant music-induced sadness.

In contemplating the function and origin of music, a number of scholars have considered whether music might be an evolutionary adaptation. This article reviews the basic arguments related to evolutionary claims for music. Although evolutionary theories about music remain wholly speculative, musical behaviors satisfy a number of basic conditions, which suggests that there is indeed merit in pursuing possible evolutionary accounts. KEYWORDS: Evolutionary theories of music; Music industry; Evolutionary origin of language; Music and social bonding; Oxytocin; Mood regulationAddressing the question of music's origins has a long history and is patently speculative. Although several cultures have provided colorful stories describing how people acquired the capacity for music, most contemporary scholars have focused on possible psychological, social, and cultural beginnings. In this article, I propose to offer a social account of music's origins that is explicitly linked to one of the most successful theories yet devised: the theory of evolution by natural selection.Evolution is often thought of in purely physiological rather than psychological terms. 1-5 It is not simply that evolution has shaped immune systems, digestive tracts, and knee caps. Evolution has also shaped our attitudes, dispositions, emotions, perceptions, and cognitive functions. Some of our deepest convictions can be traced to plausible evolutionary origins: we love life, we fear death, and we nurture our children because these dispositions better ensure the propagation of our genes.The theory of evolution by natural selection is a distal theory. It is not a theory that explains specific behaviors, such as why you chose to cook ravioli for dinner last night, or why you parked in a particular parking spot this morning. Similarly, if music is an evolutionary adaptation, this will not allow us to account for particular musical acts, such as Mendelssohn's writing of the Scottish Symphony. Evolution proceeds by selecting traits that are adaptive to an organism's environment. For example, evolution did not "originate" or "create" the phenomenon of altruism. Instead, given a certain environment, natural selection favored individuals who exhibited certain altruistic traits. Evolution does not dictate our behavior: it selects which behaviors are likely to be passed on to subsequent generations-and it selects only those behaviors that have a genetic component. So in discussing possible evolutionary origins for musical behaviors, the question is not, What caused people to make music? but rather, How might music-making behaviors have escaped the hatchet of natural selection? or more precisely, What advantage is conferred on those individuals who exhibit musical behaviors over those who do not?

An experiment was carried out to determine limitations in listeners' abilities to identify the number of concurrently sounding voices in polyphonic textures. As the number of concurrent voices in a musical texture increases, expert musicians are both slower to respond to the addition of new voices and more prone to identify incorrectly the number of voices present. For musical textures employing relatively homogeneous timbres, the accuracy of identifying the number of concurrent voices drops markedly at the point where a three-voice texture is augmented to four voices. Beyond three voices, confusions become commonplace; the most frequent type of confusion is underestimation of the number of voices present. Voice entries were found to be perceived more easily than voice exits, and entries of outer voices were found to be identified more easily than entries of inner voices. Compared with a nonmusician subject, musicians were found to be more accurate and consistent in denumerating concurrent voices—suggesting that an awareness of textural density may be a musically relevant skill.

The tone profile method of key determinatio n (Krumhansl, 1990) predicts key and key changes in a range of western tonal styles. However, the tone profile method fails to account for certain important effects in tonality perception (Butler, 1989). A modified version of Krumhansl's method of key determina tion is described that takes into account (a) subsidiary pitches and pitch sa lience according to Terhardt, S toll, and Seewann (1982a, 1982b), and (b) the effect of sensory memory decay. Both modification s are shown to improve the correlationbe tween model predictions and experimental data gathered by Krumhansl and Kessler (1982) on the tonality of harmonic progressions . However, the new model described here fails to account for Brown 's (1988) experimental findings on the tonality of melodies. The results here are consistent with the view that both structural and functional factors play a role in the perception of tonality.