IL RITAGLIO (le mie ossessioni musicali)

IL RITAGLIO (le mie ossessioni musicali)

C’è poi la fase in cui i figli si mettono a ritagliare. Intere giornate dedicate a questa attività, alla fine (intorno all’ora di cena) il genitore si sente sia appagato che scorato: appagato nel vedere la fantasia dei suoi bambini riflessa nel profilo abbozzato di quelle effimere immaginette ricavate dai fogli di carta, scorato per il disordine dei ritagli che regna nella stanza. Con questa mista disposizione d’animo si accinge a separare il grano dal loglio destinando quest’ultimo alla pattumiera bianca. Ogni tanto un figlio lancia l’allarme: “non buttarlo! è la pecorella del pastore!”. Hai confuso il ritagliato con il ritaglio, capita, molto spesso si somigliano. Ma è davvero la pecorella del pastore quella che hai in mano? Mah, il sospetto ti viene, sembra che i bambini siano particolarmente inclini a vedere le cose anche dove nessuno le ha progettate.

Quando l’uomo si è “ritagliato” un linguaggio su misura per comunicare ha creato lo stesso casino, senonché non è passato nessun genitore a buttare nella spazzatura bianca i ritagli, sono rimasti lì, poi qualcuno con il tempo c’ha rimesso mano trafficando con gli avanzi e ha battezzato il tutto: arte. Musica, per esempio.

Nella storia dell’uomo la musica non ha nessun significato, è roba da buttare in spazzatura. Senonché, ogni tanto si alza un “bambino” particolarmente geniale ad implorarti di non buttarla via perché in realtà significa questo e quello e per lui è particolarmente preziosa.

Tra l’immaginetta e i ritagli c’è lo stesso rapporto che c’è tra il linguaggio naturale e la musica. Le immaginette hanno un riferimento ben preciso, ma con un po’ di fantasia ce l’hanno anche i ritagli, in realtà ne hanno più di uno, tutti collocati in quel territorio a metà strada tra arbitrio e precisione. E’ la terra dell’immaginazione, o della fantasia.

Capire e godere dell’arte consiste nell’esercitare questa fantasia che associa a una “forma” un significato, anche se quella forma non è stata progettata per rinviare ad alcun significato. L’esercizio è tanto più divertente e tanto più facilitato dalla ricchezza delle forme con cui ti confronti, ma anche dalla ricchezza della tua esperienza e della tua cultura. Se hai visto tante cose potrai capire meglio che forma assumono le nuvole in cielo.

HL 4. Anticipation

4. Anticipation
Note:cosa lega musica e linguaggi naturali?

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music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic.
Note:FLESSIBILITÀ

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The thrills, chills, and tears we experience from music are the result of having our expectations artfully manipulated by a skilled composer and the musicians who interpret that music.
Note:ECCITAZIONE

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deceptive cadence.
Note:UN CLASSICO

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The Beatles’ “For No One” ends on the V chord (the fifth degree of the scale we’re in) and we wait for a resolution that never comes—at least not in that song. But the very next song on the album Revolver starts a whole step down from the very chord we were waiting to hear,
Note:ESEMPIO

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Steely Dan do it by playing songs that are essentially the blues (with blues structure and chord progressions) but by adding unusual harmonies to the chords that make them sound very unblues—for
Note:ALTRO CASO

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“Chain Lightning.”
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Miles Davis and John Coltrane made careers out of reharmonizing blues progressions
Note:TRA FAMILIARITÀ BLUES ED ESOTISMO

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(Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” is all one chord.)
Note:IMMOBILITÀ MAI ROTTA

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In “Yesterday,” the main melodic phrase is seven measures long; the Beatles surprise us by violating one of the most basic assumptions of popular music, the four- or eight-measure phrase unit
Note:UNITÀ

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In “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” the Beatles violate expectations by first setting up a hypnotic, repetitive ending
Note:FINALE A SORPRESA

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they end the song abruptly, and not even at the end of a phrase—they
Note:CccccNIENTE FADE OUT

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The Carpenters use timbre to violate genre expectations; they were probably the last group people expected to use a distorted electric guitar, but they did on “Please Mr. Postman”
Note:DISTORSIONI

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using violins (as for example, on “As Tears Go By”).
Note:GLI STONES LA BAND PIÙ GREZZA IN CIRCOLAZIONE

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as in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy,” Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” or the Allman Brothers’ “One Way Out.”
Note:APL CLIMAX SMETTERE DI SUONAR LASCIANDO IL SOLISTA

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the band suddenly starts playing at half the tempo they were before.
Note:FINALE A SORPRESA DI TANTI ROCK BLUES

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Creedence Clearwater Revival pulls out this slowed-down ending in “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”—by
Note:Ccccccccc

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and they violate the expectations of that by coming in again for the real ending of the song at full tempo.

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The Police combined reggae with rock to create a new sound that fulfilled some and violated other rhythmic expectations simultaneously.
Note:UPTEMPO E FFTEMPO COMBINATE

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“Spirits in the Material World” from their album Ghost in the Machine takes this rhythmic play to such an extreme
Note:ASCOLTALO QUI IL BASSO DI STING

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The scales they used deprive us of the notion of a resolution, a root to the scale, or a musical “home,” thus creating the illusion of no home,
Note:SHONBERG

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lack of grounding,
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There is nothing intrinsically catlike about the word cat or even any of the letters in the word. We have learned that this collection of sounds represents the feline house pet. Similarly, we have learned that certain sequences of tones go together, and we expect them to continue to do so.
Note:IL SUONO È ecc NTERPRETATO PIÙ CHE ASCOLTATO

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statistical analysis our brain has performed of how often they have gone together in the past.
Note:LO STRUMENTO

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Life presents us with similar situations that differ only in details, and often those details are insignificant. Learning to read is an example.
Note:ANALOGIE

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An important way that our brain deals with standard situations is that it extracts those elements that are common to multiple situations and creates a framework within which to place them;
Note:SCHEMA

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The schema leads to clear expectations,
Note:DALLO SCHEMA ALL ASPETTATIVA

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Our musical schema for Western music includes implicit knowledge of the scales that are normally used. This is why Indian or Pakistani music, for example, sounds “strange” to us
Note:TONALITÀ

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We develop schemas for particular musical genres and styles; style is just another word for “repetition.”
Note:STILE

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The principal schemas we develop include a vocabulary of genres and styles, as well as of eras (1970s music sounds different from 1930s music), rhythms, chord progressions, phrase structure (how many measures to a phrase), how long a song is, and what notes typically follow what.
Note:GENERI

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Songs that we keep coming back to for years play around with expectations just enough that they are always at least a little bit surprising. Steely Dan, the Beatles, Rachmaninoff, and Miles Davis are just a few of the artists that some people say they never tire of, and this is a big part of the reason.
Note:MAI STANCHI

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Music theorists have identified a principle called gap fill; in a sequence of tones, if a melody makes a large leap, either up or down, the next note should change direction.
Note:GAP FILL

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If the melody makes a big leap, theorists describe a tendency for the melody to “want” to return to the jumping-off point;
Note:RIMBALZO

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In “Over the Rainbow,” the melody begins with one of the largest leaps we’ve ever experienced in a lifetime of music listening: an octave. This is a strong schematic violation, and so the composer rewards and soothes us by bringing the melody back toward home again,
Note:TUTTI A CASA

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Sting does the same thing in “Roxanne”:
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

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We also hear gap fill in the adagio cantabile from Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata.
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

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To delay the resolution—Beethoven was a master of suspense—instead of continuing the descent down to the tonic, Beethoven moves away from it.
Note:DELEY RESOLUTION...I MAESTRI

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What do we know about the neural basis for musical expectations and musical emotion?

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When you store a picture on your computer, the picture is not stored on your hard drive the way that a photograph is stored in your grandmother’s photo album.
Note:PC E MENTE

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stored in a file made up of 0s and 1s—the binary code that computers use to represent everything.
Note:CODICI...LA REALTÀ DIGITALIZZATA

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In the simplest case of a black-and-white photograph, a 1 might represent that there is a black dot at a particular place in the picture, and a 0 might indicate the absence of a black dot, or a white dot.
Note:ESEMPIO

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Similarly, audio files are stored in binary format, as sequences of 0s and 1s. The 0s and 1s represent whether or not there is any sound at particular parts of the frequency spectrum.
Note:AUDIO

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Of course, the computer (brain) is running a lot of fancy software (mind) that translates the code effortlessly.
Note:UN TRADUTTORE FENOMENALE

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This is what the neural code is like. Millions of nerves firing at different rates and different intensities, all of it invisible to us.
Note:NERVI FIRING

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my friend Perry Cook and I were astonished when we read an article about a man who could look at phonograph records and identify the piece of music that was on them, by looking at the grooves, with the label obscured.
Note:MUSICA E SOLCHI

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The grooves of a vinyl record contain a code that is “read” by the needle. Low notes create wide grooves, high notes create narrow grooves,
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If a person knew many pieces of music well, it would be possible to characterize them in terms of how many low notes there were (rap music has a lot, baroque concertos don’t), how steady versus percussive the low notes are (think of a jazz-swing tune with walking bass as opposed to a funk tune with slapping bass), and to learn how these shapes are encoded in vinyl.
Note:Ccccccccc

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How can we study neural codes and learn to interpret them? Some neuroscientists start by studying neurons and their characteristics—what causes them to fire, how rapidly they fire, what their refractory period is (how long they need to recover between firings); we study how neurons communicate with each other and the role of neurotransmitters in conveying information in the brain.
Note:ANCHE IL CERVELLO HA I SUOI CODICI

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Activity from outside the brain can cause a neuron to fire—such as when a tone of a particular frequency excites the basilar membrane, and it in turn passes a signal up to a frequency-selective neurons in the auditory cortex.
Note:ATTIVAZIONE

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Generally, neurotransmitters cause the receiving neuron to fire or prevent it from firing.
Note:TRASMETTITORI

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One finding at the macro level about the function of the brain is the popular notion about hemispheric specialization—the idea that the left half of the brain and the right half of the brain perform different cognitive functions.
Note:EMISFERI

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To begin with, the research on which this is based was performed on right-handed people.
Note:PRIMO LIMITE A QS RICERCHE

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Writers, businessmen, and engineers refer to themselves as left-brain dominant, and artists, dancers, and musicians as right-brain dominant. The popular conception that the left brain is analytical and the right brain is artistic
Note:VULGATA

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We’ve found lateralization in the brain basis of music as well. The overall contour of a melody—simply its melodic shape, while ignoring intervals—is processed in the right hemisphere,
Note:MELODIA

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Musical training appears to have the effect of shifting some music processing from the right (imagistic) hemisphere to the left (logical) hemisphere,
Note:TRAINING

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Children show less lateralization of musical operations than do adults, regardless of whether they are musicians or not.
Note:BAMBINI

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Stefan Koelsch, Angela Friederici,
Note:SOTTO

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The structural processing—musical syntax—has been localized to the frontal lobes of both hemispheres in areas adjacent to and overlapping with those regions that process speech syntax, such as Broca’s area, and shows up regardless of whether listeners have musical training.
Note:DOVE...LA MUSICA NEL CERVELLO

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The brain’s music system appears to operate with functional independence from the language system—the
Note:MUSICA E LINGUAGGIO

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As reported by Oliver Sacks, Clive lost all memory except for musical memories, and the memory of his wife. Other cases have been reported for which the patient lost music but retained language
Note:CHI PERSE LE FACOLTÀ LINGUISTICHE

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When portions of his left cortex deteriorated, the composer Ravel selectively lost his sense of pitch while retaining his sense of timbre, a deficit that inspired his writing of Bolero,
Note:GENESI DEL BOLERO

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resonance imaging machine (MRI)

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RISONANZA

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(The research on the development of the first MRI scanners was performed by the British company EMI, financed in large part from their profits on Beatles records. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” might well have been titled “I Want to Scan Your Brain.”)
Note:MRI...GENESI

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With fMRI I can tell that you are listening to music as opposed to watching a silent film, but we can’t yet tell if you’re listening to hip-hop versus Gregorian chants,
Note:I LIMITI

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Listening to music and attending to its syntactic features—its structure—activated a particular region of the frontal cortex on the left side called pars orbitalis—a subsection of the region known as Brodmann Area 47.
Note:ANALISI FMRI

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In addition to this left hemisphere activation, we also found activation in an analogous area of the right hemisphere. This told us that attending to structure in music requires both halves of the brain, while attending to structure in language only requires the left half.
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left-hemisphere regions that we found were active in tracking musical structure were the very same ones that are active when deaf people are communicating by sign language.
Note:I SORDI

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We found evidence for the existence of a brain region that processes structure in general,
Note:STRUTTURE

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The frontal lobes access our hippocampus and regions in the interior of the temporal lobe and ask if there is anything in our memory banks that can help to understand this signal. Have I heard this particular pattern before? If so, when? What does it mean? Is
RUOLO DELLA MEMORIA

A CHE SERVE LA MUSICA?

A CHE SERVE LA MUSICA?

1) A niente (Steven Pinker). E’ solo materiale di risulta che ha prodotto l'uomo nello sforzo di forgiare il suo linguaggio.

2) A corteggiare (Charles Darwin). Pensa solo a quante avventure hanno le rock star!

3) A produrre un legame sociale (Daniel Levitin). Pensa al coordinamento che necessità ballare o cantare insieme una musica.

4) Allo sviluppo cognitivo (Sandra Threub). E’ un buon modo per preparare un bambino alle sfide cognitive che lo attendono (per esempio, imparare una lingua naturale).

IMO: 15-35-40-10

Perché ci piace una musica? SINTESI FACEBOOK

LE 3 FUNZIONI DELLA MUSICA

1) Piacere neurofisiologico (vedi Daniel Levitine).

2) Soddisfazione psicologica (vedi Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi).

3) Identificazione personale (vedi Robin Hanson).

Sapere a cosa serve ci aiuta a capire quando è bella.

*****

Perché ci piace una musica?

Una musica ci piace: 1) se conforme alla nostra fisiologia, 2) se si propone come gioco divertente, 3) se aumenta il nostro status in società.


Per assolvere a 1 deve essere semplice. Per assolvere a 2 deve essere sufficientemente complessa (tale da produrre un effetto “flusso”). Per assolvere a 3 deve essere in grado di produrre identità.

Le musiche sbagliate sono quelle eccessivamente banali, oppure cervellotiche, oppure troppo astratte o museali. Queste caratteristiche sono relative, dipendono dal soggetto che ascolta. A non essere relativo, forse, è l'effetto che producono sul soggetto che ascolta.

Identificati questi elementi, ci possiamo fare un'idea di cosa sia la "bellezza".

9. The Music Instinct

9. The Music Instinct
Note:contro pinker (la musica potrebbe sparire senza conseguenze evolutive)evolutionary lag: 50.000lo strano caso dello spettatoredubbi sulla tesi di pinker: 1 la musica è univrsale 2 interspecie 3 ha divrrse funzioni 4 c è da sempre e suprra l evol lag3 funzioni: corteggiamento social bond allenamento al linguaggio

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Where did music come from?
Note:LA DOMANDA

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part of human or paleohuman mating rituals.
Note:PER DARWIN...SCOLLEGATA DALLA LEGGE DEL PIÙ ADATTO...SELEZIONE SESSUALE...QUI DARWIN E WALLACE VENGONO CONFUSI

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a challenge issued by the cognitive psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.
Note:LA SFIDA

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“Language is clearly an evolutionary adaptation,”
Note:X PINKER

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have a clear evolutionary purpose.”
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this occurs when evolutionary forces propagate an adaptation for a particular reason,
Note:COS È L ADATTAMENTO

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Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel, borrowing the term from architecture. In architecture,
Note:ALTERNATIVA ALL ADATTAMENTO

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There will necessarily be a space between the arches, not because it was planned
Note:SPAZIO TRA GLI ARCHI

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Birds evolved feathers to keep warm, but they coopted the feathers for another purpose—flying.
Note:ESEMPIO

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language is an adaptation and music is its spandrel.
Note:TESI DI PINKER

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it is merely a by-product,

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“Music is auditory cheesecake,”
Note:PIATTO CUCINATO CON GLI AVANZI

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We can eat foods that have no nutritive value and we can have sex without procreating;
Note:ESEMPI

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none of these is adaptive,

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music is simply a pleasure-seeking behavior
Note:MUSICA COME CARAMELLA...EROINA

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“Music,” Pinker lectured us, “pushes buttons for language ability
Note:COME LA CARAMELLA X IL PIACERE DELLO ZUCCHERO

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the motor control system that injects rhythm into the muscles
Note:ESEMPIO DI UNA FUNZIONE

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“music is useless.
Note:DERIVA DALLA NOSTRA CAPACITÀ LINGUISTICA USATA IN MODO IMPROPRIO

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attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction
Note:COSE A CUI NN SERVE

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music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.”
Note:PUÓ SPARIRE DOMANI

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The cosmologist John Barrow said that music has no role in survival of the species, and psychologist Dan Sperber called music “an evolutionary parasite.”
Note:ALTRE LIQUIDAZIONI

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cognitive capacity to process complex sound patterns that vary in pitch and duration,
Note:MUSICA PARASSITARIA DI FACOLTÀ LINGUISTICHE

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Ian Cross of Cambridge University sums up: “For Pinker, Sperber, and Barrow, music exists simply because of the pleasure that it affords; its basis is purely hedonic.”
Note:EDONISMO...E ANCHE UN PÒ PERVERSO

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all of our phenotypic attributes (our appearance, physiological attributes, and some behaviors) are encoded in our genes,
Note:PRIMO ASUNTO EVOL

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The second assumption of evolutionary theory is that there exists between us some natural genetic variability.
Note:SECONDO

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when we mate, our genetic material combines to form a new being, 50 percent
Note:TERZO

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The genes that exist in you today (with the exception of a small number that may have mutated) are those that reproduced successfully in the past.
Note:ESITO

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the idea of sexual selection. Because an organism must reproduce to pass its genes on, qualities that will attract a mate should eventually become encoded in the genome.
Note:UNA SELEZIONE ALTERNATIVA

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Might music play a role in sexual selection? Darwin thought so. In The Descent of Man he wrote, “I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.
Note:ECCO ALLORA L ALYERNATIVA A PINKER

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associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling,
Note:LA MUSICA....COSA DIVENTA

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Darwin believed that music preceded speech as a means of courtship,
Note:CORTEGGIAMENTO

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Geoffrey Miller
Note:SOTTO

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Jimi Hendrix had “sexual liaisons with hundreds of groupies,
Note:TIPI COOL

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Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, recalls his experience with their big concert tours in the seventies: “I was on my way to love. Always. Whatever road I took,
Note:Cccccc

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for the top rock stars, such as Mick Jagger, physical appearance doesn’t seem to be an issue.
Note:Ccccccc

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anyone who could sing and dance was advertising to potential mates his stamina and overall good health, physical and mental.
Note:PUBBLICOTÀ

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advertising that he had enough food and sturdy enough shelter that he could afford to waste valuable time on developing a purely unnecessary skill.
Note:SECONDO SEGNALE...LA CODA

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In contemporary society, we see this with rich people who build elaborate houses or drive hundred-thousand-dollar cars. The sexual selection message is clear: Choose me.
Note:ANALOGIA

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In contemporary society, interest in music also peaks during adolescence, further bolstering the sexual-selection aspects of music.
Note:ALTRO INDIZIO

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dancing in past hunter-gatherer societies was anything like what we observe in contemporary ones, it typically extended for many hours, requiring great aerobic effort.
Note:I VRAVE DEI PRIMITIVI

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Most tribal dancing includes repeated high-stepping, stomping,
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Many mental illnesses are now known to undermine the ability to dance or to perform rhythmically—schizophrenia and Parkinson’s, to name just two—and
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Another possibility is that evolution selected creativity in general as a marker of sexual fitness. Improvisation and novelty in a combined music/dance performance would indicate the cognitive flexibility
Note:FLESSIBILITÀ COGNITIVA

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Miller and his colleague Martie Haselton
Note:SOTTO

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while wealth may predict who will make a good dad (for child rearing), creativity may better predict who will furnish the best genes (for child fathering).
Note:PAFRE SOLO PUTATIVO

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The results showed that when they were at their peak fertility, women preferred the creative but poor artist to the not creative but rich man as a short-term mate,
Note:ESPERIMENTO

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Far more women want to sleep with rock stars and athletes than to marry them.
Note:STEREOTIPO

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First, if music was nonadaptive, then music lovers should be at some evolutionary or survival disadvantage. Second, music shouldn’t have been around very long.
Note:SE PINKER AVESSE RAGIONE

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All the available evidence is that music can’t be merely auditory cheesecake;
Note:TESI

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The best estimates are that it takes a minimum of fifty thousand years for an adaptation to show up in the human genome. This is called evolutionary lag—the
Note:EV LAG

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When we ask about the evolutionary basis for music, it does no good to think about Britney or Bach. We have to think what music was like around fifty thousand years ago.
Note:DI CONSEGUENZA

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But it is only in the last five hundred years that music has become a spectator activity—the
Note:EVOLUZIONE RECENTE...

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Most of us would be shocked if audience members at a symphonic concert got out of their chairs and clapped their hands, whooped, hollered, and danced as was de rigueur at a James Brown concert. But the reaction to James Brown is certainly closer to our true nature.
Note:LA NATURA DELLA MUSICA

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Children often show the reaction that is true to our nature:
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Cross writes that “musical ability cannot be defined solely in terms of productive competence”; virtually every member of our own society is capable of listening to and hence of understanding music.
Note:UNIVERSALE

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facts about music’s ubiquity, history, and anatomy,
Note:CONTRO PINKER...RIASSUNTO

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Additional possibilities have been argued as well. One is social bonding and cohesion.
Note:IPOTESI ALTERNATIVE A PINKER (CHEESKAKE) E DARWIN (SEX SELECTION)

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synchrony,
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Singing around the ancient campfire might have been a way to stay awake, to ward off predators, and to develop social coordination and social cooperation within the group.
Note:AL CAMPO

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evidence for the social-bonding basis of music

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my work with Ursula Bellugi
Note:AUTORI

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(ASD).

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Although some people with ASD play music, and some of them have reached a high level of technical proficiency, they do not report being emotionally moved by music.
Note:GLI AUTISTICI

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they are attracted to the structure of music.
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she finds music “pretty” but that in general, she just “doesn’t get it” or understand why people react to it the way that they do.
Note:TEMPLE GARDIN

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music evolved because it promoted cognitive development. Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech
Note:TERZA IPOTESI

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Because music is a complex activity, Trehub suggests that it may help prepare the developing infant for its mental life ahead. It shares many of the features of speech
Note:L AUTORE

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No human has ever learned language by memorization. Babies don’t simply memorize every word and sentence they’ve ever heard; rather, they learn rules and apply them in perceiving and generating new speech.
Note:OVEREXTENSION...UN MODO CREATIVO DI SBAGLIARE

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This is why we hear young children say, “He goed to the store,”
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intelligent children are more likely to make these mistakes
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The second piece of evidence that children don’t simply memorize language is logical: All of us speak sentences that we’ve never heard before.
Note:IL LINGUAGGIO È GENERATIVO

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Music is also generative. For every musical phrase I hear, I can always add a note to the beginning, end, or middle to generate a new musical phrase.
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Cosmides and Tooby
Note:SOPRA

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Music processing helps infants to prepare for language; it may pave the way to linguistic prosody, even before the child’s developing brain is ready to process phonetics.
Note:ESERCIZIO

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Mother-infant interactions involving music almost always entail both singing and rhythmic movement, such as rocking or caressing. This appears to be culturally universal.
Note:MADRE FIGLIO

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by almost all accounts the music of our distant ancestors was heavily rhythmic. Rhythm stirs our bodies. Tonality and melody stir our brains.
Note:LA MUSICA DEI PRIMITIVI

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Contemporary “classical” music is practiced mostly in universities; it is regrettably listened to by almost no one compared to popular music; much of it deconstructs harmony, melody, and rhythm, rendering them all but unrecognizable; in its least accessible form it is a purely intellectual exercise, and save for the rare avant-garde ballet company, no one dances to it either.
Note:LA CLASSICA CONTEMPORANEA...UN ESEMPIO ESTREMO

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A fourth argument for music as an adaptation comes from other species. If we can show that other species use music for similar purposes, this presents a strong evolutionary argument.
Note:QUARTO ARGOMENTO

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Other animal vocalizations are more clearly related to courtship.
Note:DI SOLITO

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Music’s evolutionary origin is established because it is present across all humans (meeting the biologists’ criterion of being widespread in a species); it has been around a long time (refuting the notion that it is merely audio cheesecake); it involves specialized brain structures, including dedicated memory systems that can remain functional when other memory systems fail (when a physical brain system develops across all humans, we assume that it has an evolutionary basis); and it is analogous to music making in other species.
RIASSUMIAMO I PUNTI ANTIPINKER

9 Il gusto musicale

Il gusto musicale

Per capire il gusto musicale occorre capire cosa sia la musica, da dove esca. Cerco di spiegarlo con una semplice analogia.

Poniamo mi riproponga di disegnare e colorare su un foglio bianco di carta una serie di pentagonineri allineati in modo tale che si tocchino solo con i vertici. Anzi, poniamo che mi paghino per farlo nel miglior modo possibile, dieci euro a foglio. In breve tempo affino le mie abilità e divento orgoglioso del mio lavoro: le linee che tratteggio a mano libera sembrano tirate con un righello e la coloratura è uniforme e priva di sbavature. Ammirando la mia opera mi accorgo che intercalati ai pentagoni neri di cui vado tanto orgoglioso appaiono necessariamente dei pentagoni bianchi a formare una specie di scacchiera: tanto più perfetti sono i primi, quanto più perfetti risultano i secondi.

Fuor di metafora: i pentagoni neri sono illinguaggio, quelli bianchi sono la musica.

Noi abbiamo sviluppato il nostro linguaggio peradattarci all’ambiente circostante, la musica ce la siamo invece ritrovata lì per puro caso, come un mero effetto collaterale. Quando ritaglio dalla carta alla fine ottengo due prodotti: la figura che intendevo ritagliare e i rimasugli di carta. La figura è il linguaggio, i rimasugli da gettare nella spazzatura sono la musica. Quando lo scultore realizza la sua opera il risultato finale qual è? Semplice, il prodotto finito e il materiale di risulta. Il linguaggio è il prodotto finito, la musica è il materiale di risulta. Quando l’architetto realizza il suo tempio salteranno all’occhio due cose archi e pennacchi: gli archi sono il linguaggio, i pennacchi sono la musica.

Le penne degli uccelli si sono evolute per tenere caldo, poi sono state usate per volare. Capita. In natura capita spesso.

La musica è quindi uno  scarto di lavorazione nel cantiere del linguaggio, un piatto cucinato con gli avanzi del vero pranzo. Perché mangiamo le caramelle? Abbiamo sviluppato certe sensazioni di piacere per scovare meglio dei cibi nutritivi, poi le abbiamo utilizzati anche per altro, per esempio per papparci con gusto delle caramelle, anche se il loro valore nutritivo è nullo. Perché ci droghiamo con l’eroina? Perché il bisogno di gratificazione ci spinge a migliorare la nostra condizione materiale, ma puo’ essere utilizzato diversamente, per esempio per apprezzare una “pera”. Musica, caramelle e eroina hanno la stessa origine, sono perversioni delle nostre facoltà adattive.

Il gusto musicale è allora la quintessenza del piacere fine a se stesso, e abbiamo appena visto come qualcosa del genere puo’ emergere in un mondo in cui nulla è fine a se stesso. Le nostre abilità nel sincronizzare i movimenti ci consentono anche di apprezzare un buon ritmo musicale, il sistema emotivo che ci fa reagire alle altezze e alle durate di una voce che mormora il nostro nome ci consente anche di apprezzare una melodia.

La musica non serve a niente, non gioca nessun ruolo nella sopravvivenza della specie, potrebbe sparire domani senza conseguenze nell’evoluzione dell’uomo, non ci allunga la vita, non ci facilita nell’avere nipoti in buona salute, non ci agevola nel fare predizioni su quello che ci accadrà… Non serve a nulla. Tornando all’analogia, mentre i pentagoni neri mi fanno guadagnare uno stipendio col quale nutrirò e farò studiare i miei figli che si faranno largo nella società in cui vivono e perpetueranno i miei geni, i pentagoni bianchi non hanno alcuna funzione, non servono a nulla, nessuno mi ha chiesto di disegnarli, io non volevo neanche farlo, sono venuto da sè. Musica e pentagoni bianchi sono dei parassiti rispettivamente delle facoltà linguistiche e dei pentagoni neri.

La musica esiste solo per il piacere che procura, ha una funzione edonistica, come l’eroina, e il gusto musicale è la perversione di una facoltà linguistica. Grazie al gusto trasformiamo il “gratuito” in godimento.

1 Quel che conta nella musica

Riccardo Mariani

3 min · 

Amazon

 · 

Quando degustiamo un piatto prelibato non siamo molto interessati alla temperatura del forno nel momento in cui lo chef introduce il limone, nemmeno sentiamo l'esigenza di conoscere l'apertura delle lenti di una cinepresa nel corso di un primo piano avvincente, allo stesso modo i dettagli tecnici passano in secondo piano durante l'ascolto di un brano musicale.
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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition,…

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1 Musica: struttura vs basi neurologiche

Riccardo Mariani

8 min · 

Amazon

 · 

La polifonia minaccia l’unità divina.
Il tritono fa scalpore nel medioevo.
I timbri arditi spaventano i cantautori.
I ritmi africaneggianti preoccupano i genitori borghesi.
I rumori fanno scandalo tra i benpensanti in sala.

Ma cos’è la musica? No, non puo’ essere solo un meccanismo, una struttura, deve esserci una profonda base neurologica che spieghi certi effetti che ha su di noi.

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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition,…

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L'inutilità della musica

Riccardo Mariani

21 settembre 2013 · 

Ma sentite un po’ quell' impertinente di Steven Pinker sulla musica:

"… music is useless. It shows no signs of design for attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction of the world. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged…"

E il cosmologo John Barrow:

"... music has no role in survival of the species…"

Al coro si unisce nientemeno che Daniel Sperber:

"… music an evolutionary parasite…"

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Riccardo Mariani Tenta di ribattere il neuroscienziato (e rocker) Daniel Levetin. Come? Dimostrando che le competenze sostanziali degli “educati” e dei “non educati” alla musica sono abbastanza simili. [n.b.: una competenza incorporata nel patrimonio genetico segnala l' importanza della stessa per la sopravvivenza della specie]. http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Music.../dp/0452288525Gestire

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

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