Why music?

Natural History, Dec, 2001 by Ellen Goldensohn

If music be the food of love, play on

--William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Human beings are inherently and just about universally musical. Of course, salable musical talent is not given to us all--but musical responsiveness, a musical sense, certainly is. The person who is unmoved (neither uplifted nor cast down) by melody and rhythm is perhaps as rare as the person who (through injury or illness) has lost the sense of taste and no longer desires food. Whether one's musical palate is tempted by offerings from Laurie Anderson, the Backstreet Boys, Miles Davis, the Budapest String Quartet, or the Buena Vista Social Club is immaterial. Music is a common craving. Hundreds and hundreds of radio stations base their existence on that premise.

Although compositional cleverness--be it Mozart's or Mariah Carey's--may be appreciated intellectually, music appeals directly and almost exclusively to the emotions. The old adage has it that music can soothe our savage breasts, but it can also open up an unhealed psychic wound, incite us to action, or hijack our better judgment (a possibility that prompted Lodovico Settembrini, the character who represents Western rationalism in Thomas Mann's great novel The Magic Mountain, to call music a "politically suspect" art.)

Is our musical capacity a meaningless by-product of our intelligence? Is it hardwired? Has it something to do with sexual selection, seduction, and mating? Or (and this is the argument I find most persuasive) does it have an essentially social function? To see what anthropologists, behavioral ecologists, and neurobiologists think, please turn to "Face the Music," by Susan Milius, on page 48.