Music and Language

Every human culture that we know of has music and language. These are universals, genuine human principles. And I go way back in our species history. So the question of what these two things might have in common you know has occurred to a lot of people. And it's sort of intuitive they both involve complex sequences you know that unfold in time. They're both forms of communication. It's interested philosophers since Plato going back over 2000 years, scientists including Darwin, who wrote about possible evolutionary links between music and language in his book, The Descent of Men and Artists, including Leonard Bernstein, who gave a set of lectures at Harvard in the 70s about possible connections between the grammar of music and the grammar of language, you know according to Noam Chomsky's theories. So it's a persistent question, and I think it continues to draw interest from scientists today because there are just some basic obvious similarities. For example, both music and language have rhythm, by which I mean systematic patterns of timing, accent and grouping. They both have melody, meaning structured patterns of pitch over time, you know they both have syntax mean discrete elements like notes or words and principles for combining those elements into sequences. Sentences aren't just random sequences of words and musical melodies and compositions are far from random sequences of notes. They're principles and they both convey emotion or affect using sound. You can tell somebody's emotions from the sound of their voice and you can get a lot of emotional information about music. Is it conveying happiness or sadness or you know mixed emotions or what have you?