Re: Animals and music

[Leon van Noorden <leonvannoorden@xxxxxxxxx>]

Brian,

If you want a CD of how animals make music together with humans:

"Life with the Birds" of the Maciunas Ensemble and Kanary Grand Band,
1997 Maciunas Ensemble and Het Appolohuis, Eindhoven



-----Message d'origine-----
De : AUDITORY Research in Auditory Perception
[mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] De la part de Brian Gygi
Envoyé : woensdag 2 maart 2005 20:22
À : AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Objet : Animals and music

At 12:19 PM 3/1/2005, Philip Dorrell wrote:
>Even if there is some set of sounds which some species of animal is
>capable of responding to in the same way that we humans respond to the
>set of sounds that we call music, it may not be the same set of sounds.
>In other words, "animal music" may be different from human music, and if
>so,  it will be different for each species of animal. Furthermore, human
>music is distinct from normal human communication sounds (i.e. speech
>and a few other things), so animal music is also likely to be distinct
>from normal animal communication sounds. Finally, human music is very
>difficult even for humans to compose, so we might suppose that animal
>music is difficult to compose, and, non-human animals being generally
>less talented in intellectual fields than humans, it is entirely
>possible that no animal has ever composed a single item of animal music.


One of the best definitions of music I heard was from the guitarist Robert
Fripp, who said "Music is quality organized in sound."  By that he meant
that music is sound manipulated to have an aesthetic effect.  So, it is not
"difficult to compose" music, it is just difficult to compose music that
hasn't been done before and better.  As for animal music, if we believe
Kierkegaard that we couldn't understand a lion even if he was talking,
since we have no idea what they would consider aesthetic, why would we be
able to recognize animal music even if we heard it?  And where could we buy
their CDs?