Why we like the music we do

[sdtom]

like your response

[Double-A]

This research has nothing to do with Beethoven vs. the "avant garde boys".  It is about physiology, specifically about how the brain works when processing music.

Music when it hits the eardrums is a complex pattern of minute variations in air pressure.  If you plotted a graph of it it would look completely meaningless (I believe it is what is recorded on CD's (and older technologies) and then turned back into sound by the player).  It is the inner ear and the brain that performs some sort of Fourier transformation on it and singles out the individual frequencies of which a chord is made up and follows that through time.  The distinction consonance / dissonance somehow occurs in this context--and is apparently innate (unlike the preference for either) according to these results--and the scientific importance must be discussed in the same context.

The study does indeed nothing to account for preferences in musical taste.  It applies to the "avant garde boys" as much as to Beethoven (and to Chinese opera as well!).

As to the experiment of testing unaccustomed subjects on their preferred musical taste:  I wouldn't be too sure about the outcome.  "Rach2" and Pastorale are highly complex and long pieces; I believe we can consider it a settled fact that they are an acquired (or learned) taste.  So I would be surprised if subjects would gravitate to these "monsters" who are unfamiliar even with music with more than one voice.

[lasm2000]

The study does indeed nothing to account for preferences in musical taste.  It applies to the "avant garde boys" as much as to Beethoven (and to Chinese opera as well!).

I essentially agree with your point. Maybe I kind of confused the discussion by comparing the two musical currents. But, thing is, look at the headline of the article:

"Why we like the music we do
New study suggests that musical tastes are cultural in origin, not hardwired in the brain."

Sure, musical tastes have a largely learnt component, doubly so for complex pieces. But to conclude from research which essentially looked if there's a preferred interval or chord as listened in isolation that musical tastes are cultural, is at least IMO, a non sequitur. It is almost like giving blind sample tastes of basil and wasabi to find out if there's an "innate" preference for a cuisine. Sure, we learn to love/hate food in accordance to what we've been exposed but you wouldn't arrive to that conclusion by comparing the response of blindfolded subjects to pepper and cardamom.

I am pretty much convinced that much of what we had come to love in music has indeed come for external influences, culture, even the memories of the times when we've first heard it. But again, I wouldn't come to that conclusion from observing that people with no previous musical background at all found more or less all chords equivalent. Music is not that, it is what you later do with those chords/intervals.

[Double-A]

I agree with all of this.  It is important to note that the headline came from either the journalist who wrote the article (and who is practically completely innocent when it comes to musical theory) of from the editor.  In either case not from the author of the study.  Personally I find the question fascinating if the distinction consonance / dissonance (or indeed basil / thyme) is learned or innate, but that is just me.

Thinking some more of this:  It occurs to me that the first question to ask is the definition of "dissonance" used in this research.  The distinction occurs on a continuum and the "border", traditionally set between thirds and sevenths or their inversions, can be seen as arbitrary (indeed in earlier music theory thirds appear to have been counted as dissonance if I remember my school days correctly).

So:  What exactly did the test subjects get to listen to?  The possible spectrum for dissonance goes from the dominant seventh chord to half tone clusters.  If the subjects heard a difference in quality between thirds and sevenths:  This would go a long way to establishing that the concept is hardwired into the brain.  Not so much if the examples were octaves and half tone clusters.

P.S.  I would feel more comfortable if we all could avoid disparaging terms for musical styles we don't like.  This forum is restricted to romantic music for practical reasons; we are not defending a fortress.

[MartinH]

What I want to know is: when they played an interval of a fifth, C and G (and that's not a chord), what tuning did they use? Equal temperment as on a piano isn't the pure 5th of Pythagorean tuning. Every piano is out of tune - that's just the way it is with a fixed string and equal temperment. If a good orchestra is playing the interval C - G is distinctly NOT what a piano would sound like. Maybe it makes no difference to the study. I have listened to western classical music for 60 years and cannot make the leap to microtonal music - it just sounds out of tune. I don't see how players do it. Of course, one orchestra I play with plays everything with microtonality - even our unisons are dissonant!

[matesic]

Anyone who thinks further useful insights might be gained from this discussion (don't raise your hopes!) will find more information in Nature's own editorial article:

http://www.nature.com/news/the-people-who-don-t-get-eleanor-rigby-1.20244

which links to the paper's initial paragraph. Unfortunately there it stops, so without a subscription to Nature or access to a library we are still in the dark about the methodological details that are so necessary in order to understand exactly what it is the authors have established, if anything!

The problem is compounded by the fact that Nature's editorialist thinks it fit to give the study his or her own highly debatable slant; The people who don't get 'Eleanor Rigby'. Happy music and sad sounds are not universal. Even the experimenters themselves seem to display considerable scientific and musical naivete; as early as the second sentence they imply that "consonant" (an objective physical property, although of course arbitrary and requiring careful definition in the exact context of the study) is synonymous with "pleasant" (an emotional response), and "dissonant" with "unpleasant"! Then the editor equates this with "happy" and "sad"!! The fact that the Tsimane rated consonant and dissonant sounds as equally pleasant is apparently taken to mean they couldn't tell the difference between consonance and dissonance in the abstract. The editorial writer adds a further small but revealing semantic error of his own - apparently the Tsuimane "detect no difference between consonant and dissonant sounds" which if literally true means that to them all chords sound exactly the same! OK, we might assume "in the abstract" to be implied, but there are other examples of imprecise or mistaken comprehension which suggest to me this influential journal should stick to easier topics, like quantum mechanics...

[Double-A]

Of course, one orchestra I play with plays everything with microtonality - even our unisons are dissonant!

There you go!

Seriously, I do not think temperment matters for this kind of study:  Most people do not hear the difference. 

Thanks for the detective work, Matesic; I was too lazy to do it.  You are right, that first paragraph is not very telling except that it seems to reveal that the authors don't know enough music theory--including even the physics of sound--for this work.  The lead author is indeed a brain physiology guy (at MIT, no less), the other three are apparently anthropologists judging from their addresses.

The editorial is obviously the main source for the article that got this thread started.  It (the editorial) reads like written by someone who browsed through a musical history book and now is able to present random facts more or less loosely related to the topic of the paper.  An academic equivalent of name calling.