The Evolution of Music Through Culture and Science

The Evolution of Music Through Culture and Science
Author: Peter Townsend
Publisher:
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2020
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0198848404

The Evolution of Music by Culture and Science aims to recognise the impact of science on music, why it occurs, how we respond, and even to tentatively see if we can predict future developments. Technology has played an immense role in the development of music as it has enabled the production of new sounds, introduced new instruments and continuously improved and modified existing ones. Printing, musical notation, and modern computer aids to composition, plus recordings and electronic transmission have equally enabled us to have access to music from across the world. Such changes, whether just more powerful pianos, or new sounds as from the saxophone, have inspired composers and audiences alike. Acoustics and architecture play similar roles as they changed the scale and performance of concert halls, and with the advent of electronics, they enabled vast pop music festivals. No aspect of modern music making has been untouched by the synergy with scientific innovation. This is not a one-way interaction as the early attempts to make recordings were a major motivating force to design the electronics for amplifiers and these in turn inspired and enabled the designs of semiconductor electronics and modern computer technology. To appreciate the impact of technology on music does not require any prior scientific background as the concepts are invariably extremely simple and are presented here without technical detail. Understanding music and why we like different genres is far more complex, as this involves our personal background and taste. Both aspects change with time, and there is no contradiction in enjoying items as diverse as baroque madrigals, symphonies, jazz or pop music, or music from totally different cultures.

The Evolution of Music

The Evolution of Music
Author: Leonid Perlovsky
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2020-12-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 2889662861

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact.

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music
Author: Jane F. Fulcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199711984

As the field of Cultural History grows in prominence in the academic world, an understanding of the history of culture has become vital to scholars across disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music cultivates a return to the fundamental premises of cultural history in the cutting-edge work of musicologists concerned with cultural history and historians who deal with music. In this volume, noted academics from both of these disciplines illustrate the continuing endeavor of cultural history to grasp the realms of human experience, understanding, and communication as they are manifest or expressed symbolically through various layers of culture and in many forms of art. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music fosters and reflects a sustained dialogue about their shared goals and techniques, rejuvenating their work with new insights into the field itself.

The Digital Evolution of Live Music

The Digital Evolution of Live Music
Author: Angela Jones
Publisher: Chandos Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2015-07-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0081000707

The concept of 'live' has changed as a consequence of mediated culture. Interaction may occur in real time, but not necessarily in shared physical spaces with others. The Digital Evolution of Live Music considers notions of live music in time and space as influenced by digital technology. This book presents the argument that live music is a special case in digital experience due to its liminal status between mind and body, words and feelings, sight and sound, virtual and real. Digital live music occupies a multimodal role in a cultural contextual landscape shaped by technological innovation. The book consists of three sections. The first section looks at fan perspectives, digital technology and the jouissance of live music and music festival fans. The second section discusses music in popular culture, exploring YouTube and live music video culture and gaming soundtracks, followed by the concluding section which investigates the future of live music and digital culture. - Gives perspectives on the function of live music in digital culture and the role of digital in live music - Focuses on the interaction between live and digital music - Takes the discussion of live music beyond economics and marketing, to the cultural and philosophical implications of digital culture for the art - Includes interviews with producers and players in the digital world of music production - Furthers debate by looking at access to digital music via social media, websites, and applications that recognise the impact of digital culture on the live music experience

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Timothy Rice
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2014
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199794375

Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.

Cultural Evolution

Cultural Evolution
Author: Alex Mesoudi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2011-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226520455

Charles Darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity and biological complexity of life on earth. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the social sciences in how Darwinian theory can explain human culture. Covering a wide range of topics, including fads, public policy, the spread of religion, and herd behavior in markets, Alex Mesoudi shows that human culture is itself an evolutionary process that exhibits the key Darwinian mechanisms of variation, competition, and inheritance. This cross-disciplinary volume focuses on the ways cultural phenomena can be studied scientifically—from theoretical modeling to lab experiments, archaeological fieldwork to ethnographic studies—and shows how apparently disparate methods can complement one another to the mutual benefit of the various social science disciplines. Along the way, the book reveals how new insights arise from looking at culture from an evolutionary angle. Cultural Evolution provides a thought-provoking argument that Darwinian evolutionary theory can both unify different branches of inquiry and enhance understanding of human behavior.

Understanding Music

Understanding Music
Author: N. Alan Clark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2015-12-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781940771335

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

A Million Years of Music

A Million Years of Music
Author: Gary Tomlinson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2015-02-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1935408658

What is the origin of music? In the last few decades this centuries-old puzzle has been reinvigorated by new archaeological evidence and developments in the fields of cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary theory. Starting at a period of human prehistory long before Homo sapiens or music existed, Tomlinson describes the incremental attainments that, by changing the communication and society of prehuman species, laid the foundation for musical behaviors in more recent times. He traces in Neandertals and early sapiens the accumulation and development of these capacities, and he details their coalescence into modern musical behavior across the last hundred millennia

The Singing Neanderthals

The Singing Neanderthals
Author: Steven J. Mithen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2006
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780674021921

An examination of our language instinct. Steven Mithen draws on a huge range of sources, from neurological case studies, through child psychology and the communication systems of non-human primates to the latest paleoarchaeological evidence.

Cultural Evolution

Cultural Evolution
Author: Peter J. Richerson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262019752

Leading scholars report on current research that demonstrates the central role of cultural evolution in explaining human behavior. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional disciplinary boundaries. To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, and economics come together to explore the central role of cultural evolution in different aspects of human endeavor. The contributors take as their guiding principle the idea that cultural evolution can provide an important integrating function across the various disciplines of the human sciences, as organic evolution does for biology. The benefits of adopting a cultural evolutionary perspective are demonstrated by contributions on social systems, technology, language, and religion. Topics covered include enforcement of norms in human groups, the neuroscience of technology, language diversity, and prosociality and religion. The contributors evaluate current research on cultural evolution and consider its broader theoretical and practical implications, synthesizing past and ongoing work and sketching a roadmap for future cross-disciplinary efforts. Contributors Quentin D. Atkinson, Andrea Baronchelli, Robert Boyd, Briggs Buchanan, Joseph Bulbulia, Morten H. Christiansen, Emma Cohen, William Croft, Michael Cysouw, Dan Dediu, Nicholas Evans, Emma Flynn, Pieter François, Simon Garrod, Armin W. Geertz, Herbert Gintis, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Daniel B. M. Haun, Joseph Henrich, Daniel J. Hruschka, Marco A. Janssen, Fiona M. Jordan, Anne Kandler, James A. Kitts, Kevin N. Laland, Laurent Lehmann, Stephen C. Levinson, Elena Lieven, Sarah Mathew, Robert N. McCauley, Alex Mesoudi, Ara Norenzayan, Harriet Over, Jürgen Renn, Victoria Reyes-García, Peter J. Richerson, Stephen Shennan, Edward G. Slingerland, Dietrich Stout, Claudio Tennie, Peter Turchin, Carel van Schaik, Matthijs Van Veelen, Harvey Whitehouse, Thomas Widlok, Polly Wiessner, David Sloan Wilson