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.

A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music

“… 1 I am using the term heterophony in this article so as to be consistent with similar ideas about the evolution of musical texture that I described in Brown ( 2007 ) in an article entitled “contagious heterophony”. However, the editor of this research topic, Aleksey Nikolsky, takes issue with my usage, and suggests that his own term “isophony” (Nikolsky, 2016 , Appendix V) is a better description of the choral texture that I am alluding to. He defines isophony as a “brief call, continuously reproduced by multiple performers with irrational deviations in timing and pitch, where each participant retains idiosyncrasy of the rhythmic, timbral, and directional attributes of the pitch contour – altogether producing a ‘jumbled’ effect.” This strikes me as an excellent description of the phenomena that I am referencing here.…”

The Overlooked Tradition of “Personal Music” and Its Place in the Evolution of Music

“…"Frequency music" likely followed suit. Steady demographic growth accompanied the Neolithic "revolution" and civilizations' rise (Hassan, 1981)-together with "frequency-based" music (Nikolsky, 2016). Collective music-making was part of the "demographic expansion package" designed to consolidate and empower the "tribe" to grab and hold its territory.…”

“…It is this tradition that currently prevails in the world. Its prevalence probably started with the rise of Bronze Age urban civilizations, whose palace and temple music traditions relied on math-based theory (Nikolsky, 2016). Rationally defined pitches have made the corresponding music practices rely on the frequency aspect.…”

Commentary: The ‘Musilanguage’ Model of Language Evolution

“…Even stricter is synchronization in another “classic” texture— homophony —“music in which all melodic parts move together at more or less the same pace” (Hyer, 2001 ). Contrary to common belief, homophony is not bound to European music alone (Nikolsky, 2016 ). Its reliance on chords and harmonic intervals demands high concision in tones' onsets: in the order of under 100 msec (Huron, 2001 ), typically, 30–50 msec (Rasch, 1988 ).…”

“…Since musilanguage occupies an evolutionary position between the “natural” animal vocalizations and the simplest human oral communication, it predates mode, scale, meter—and therefore, heterophony and polyphony. This situation calls for a new term— isophony: texture that uses brief calls, continuously reproduced by multiple performers with irrational deviations in timing and pitch, where each participant retains idiosyncrasy of the rhythmic, timbral, and directional attributes of the pitch contour—altogether producing a “jumbled” effect (Nikolsky, 2016 , Appendix-5) 6 . Vocalization can be considered “isophonic” if it maintains a single call as a unit of texture, scalable shorter/longer and higher/lower through the continuum of duration and frequency for every participating part—consistently reproducing that call out-of-sync in relation to the moment of its onset or termination.…”