Subject: Re: Musical Language was:(Re: DIPLOMACY: Memetic Morphing) Date sent: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:36:58 +1100 From: Timothy Bates <tbates@bunyip.bhs.mq.edu.au> To: "Extropians" <extropians@extropy.com> Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> Hi all
>
> Max M wrote:
> >As a long time musician (+15 Years) I am absolutely convinced that music is
> >no more than a stylised abstraction of the human language!
> ...
> >It would also explain what a musical genre is.
> ...
> >Any music we don't know ususally seems boring and superficial. That is
> >probably because we don't understand the "language"
>
> You have additional support from the finding that in non musicians, there
> is a right hemisphere advantage for music while in trained musicians,
> this shifts to the left hemisphere: it is "lingufied"
>
> OF course the right hemisphere has an ability to read single words and
> remains the seat of prosody (roughly the equivalent of rhythm).
>
> cheers,
> tim
>
I have to disagree. Human language has its own song, true; but the
rhythm, key and timbre of human speech has its musical roots in the
calls of mammals, and colors the sterile cortical facticity of the word
with felt limbic emotion. Words came later. Joe