Thursday, February 22, 2018

The Origins of Musicality | Out in April

Hardcover | 392 pp. | ISBN: 9780262037457


Expected to be out in April 2018 at The MIT Press.

Research shows that all humans have a predisposition for music, just as they do for language. All of us can perceive and enjoy music, even if we can’t carry a tune and consider ourselves “unmusical.” This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Scholars from biology, musicology, neurology, genetics, computer science, anthropology, psychology, and other fields consider what music is for and why every human culture has it; whether musicality is a uniquely human capacity; and what biological and cognitive mechanisms underlie it.

Contributors outline a research program in musicality, and discuss issues in studying the evolution of music; consider principles, constraints, and theories of origins; review musicality from cross-cultural, cross-species, and cross-domain perspectives; discuss the computational modeling of animal song and creativity; and offer a historical context for the study of musicality. The volume aims to identify the basic neurocognitive mechanisms that constitute musicality (and effective ways to study these in human and nonhuman animals) and to develop a method for analyzing musical phenotypes that point to the biological basis of musicality.

Contributors
Jorge L. Armony, Judith Becker, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Bruno Gingras, Jessica Grahn, Yuko Hattori, Marisa Hoeschele, Henkjan Honing, David Huron, Dieuwke Hupkes, Yukiko Kikuchi, Julia Kursell, Marie-Élaine Lagrois, Hugo Merchant, Björn Merker, Iain Morley, Aniruddh D. Patel, Isabelle Peretz, Martin Rohrmeier, Constance Scharff, Carel ten Cate, Laurel J. Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Peter Tyack, Dominique Vuvan, Geraint Wiggins, Willem Zuidema.


P.S. The cover photo is from an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot:

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Interested in doing a Masters in Amsterdam?

For more information on how to register, see here.

N.B. The deadline for international students is 1 March 2018.

Monday, February 05, 2018

Waarom muziek op school? [Dutch]



Lodewijk Asscher (PvdA) over muziek in de klas:
"Geen groot sexy onderwerp, maar ontzettend belangrijk." 
Hoe enthusiast ook, Asscher is natuurlijk niet de eerste die dit voorstelt. Het kabinet (van Engelshoven, D66) werkt inmiddels hard aan een cultuurnota, waarin een paragraaf over het muziekonderwijs vast niet ontbreekt (zie tijdspad OCW).