A Language of Emotion

SOUND BITES

Asian languages retain much more of the tonal quality that must have characterized all early speech.  China and Indonesia, in particular, have fewer basic sounds, but you must hit the pitch right if you want to be understood.  Speech developed in the West without specific pitch values, but we still deplore monotones.  We enjoy a lively, even semi-musical, delivery but consciously avoid fixed intervals.  The latter, if persistent, would give our conversation an annoying ‘sing song’ quality.

Hitler's chanting speeches were so successful in arousing racial hatred that it is conceivable that he reproduced some of the loaded pitch combinations of primitive man that we might have thought were long gone.

Characteristic of the classic era was a pervasive sense of structure that somewhat inhibited initiative.  Symmetry was prized, and it was expected that ideas, once introduced, would be completed.  Most importantly, action was goal directed: ideas had to lead somewhere.  Music was becoming secularized, and new altars were required.  The successes of both the old fugue and the new sonata forms were partly due to their intellectual content.  Each provided a goal or purpose for composition that did not involve any aspect of worship.  The symphony was accumulating a store of rituals of its own to compete with the traditional patterns of the mass.

Biology enters into music in various ways.  One of them is the speed of a nerve impulse.  Since it takes about a fifth of a second for a message to reach the feet, an organist must learn to anticipate the need for pedal action.  It soon becomes instinctive, and they do not think about it consciously.

Folk music knows very few constraints.  A singer is free to repeat lines or add measures, change wording, and toy with intonation, and it seems that every distortion is greeted with delight. Similarly,  Hawaiian guitar enthusiasts accept and enjoy wide pitch variations that would horrify a concert audience.

Unbending stability of rhythm puts a brake on emotional expression. A desire to communicate feeling is not incompatible with the need for a steady beat, but there is a certain tension between them. The flexible pace of the tango adds to the flavor of adult sensuality, while the rigid jitterbug exercize is eternally juvenile. The low emotional pitch of the fox trot saved it from suppression by authorities even as bluenoses complained about the immorality of so much bodily contact.

Many scientists in the areas where biology, anthropology, and psychology overlap are unwilling to deny music a role in evolution. The argument goes like this: the ability to create or recall a tune is so widespread today that if it entered our gene pool as a mutation, that event must have happened at least 50,000 years ago. Furthermore, if this trait did not have ‘adaptive value’ (contribute to survival) it would have died out by now.

Claims of practical utility for music --- besides serving as a precursor to language --- have included helping with infant brain wiring, facilitating communication, and cementing group solidarity.

Composers get much emotional mileage out of rhythm and timbre, but it is mainly the melodies that grab us.  A certain tune, especially sporting a distinctive chord progression, can haunt its victim for weeks (or years).  That does not automatically make it great music, but it testifies to successful communication.  A new entry to our aesthetic control center, wherever that may be, has been opened.  The mind really appreciates that!

If a melody ends early, the performer will ordinarily wait for the expected number of measures before starting a new chorus, but there are exceptions.  When Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly") sang The Midnight Special, an AAA’ type of blues, he cut each section short after the seventh measure and started the next.  Similarly, the principal strain of Paul McCartney’s Yesterday fills just seven measures and can be restarted on the eighth if performer and audience are in a folk song mood.

Striking a piano key with extra force slightly raises pitch, creating mild anxiety. Even harder pounding tends to overcome the best-preserved felt, and the resulting discordant overtones can suggest anger or desperation. Other emotions are more difficult to express on a keyboard. Much the same goes for the xylophone and its mallet-struck cousins, all a step removed from the personality of the artist and good vehicles for the detached flavor of cool jazz.

Most pop music of our time is a kind of degenerate jazz.  Honking saxophones have been replaced by whining ampl