Musical Ability     


    The most common savant skill is musical ability.  A regularly re-occurring triad of musical genius, blindness, and mental retardation is particularly striking in the world literature on this topic (1).  One of the earliest cases reported was that of L., a 23-year-old female with an IQ of about 20 (4).  She could play musical pieces on the piano which were sung or hummed to her.  Based on observation, it was apparent that her ability to play these pieces was not based on previous exposure to the selection, but rather upon organizational skills which developed pursuant to years of practice (2).  Another report of musical genius is the case of Ilene, an autistic savant (2).  She could sing any note and could tell what note and key is being played.  She had an incredible memory for music and knew practically every song written in addition to all the facts pertaining to each of those songs.

    Another well-known savant with a very limited IQ was Thomas Wiggins, also known as "Blind Tom" (5).  He played Mozart works on the piano at age 4 and could play back flawlessly any piece no matter the complexity.  He could repeat a discourse of any length in any language without the loss of a syllable.  Once tested with two compositions of 13 and 20 pages, he repeated them without error.  Cindy is another example of a musical savant (2).  She is blind and moderately mentally retarded.  She could play any song on the piano by ear after hearing it just one time.  Musical selections were committed to memory.  Her mechanical style was characteristic of most savants.  All songs were played in the key of "C"; no sharps or flats were used.  She was unable to adapt her playing to singers; rather, the singers had to adjust to her playing.  Regardless, she possessed a truly remarkable talent.
                                                                                                                                                            
    Leslie Lemke is one of the few prodigious musical savants living at the present time.  Leslie Lemke, who appeared on "60 Minutes" in the 1980s, is blind, cerebral palsied, and severely mentally retarded (6). His verbal IQ is fifty-eight, which ranks him as mildly mentally retarded.  Leslie possesses a repertoire of over a thousand classical and popular piano pieces, which he plays "with much enthusiasm and gusto".  However, Lemke's fervor may be the exception rather than the rule since many musical savants perform in a mechanical manner.

    Hikari Oe is another musical savant known for his remarkable ability to compose music (7).  He is epileptic, developmentally delayed, visually impaired, and has limited physical coordination.  He speaks only a few words, but has learned to express himself through music.  A CD of music composed by Hikari won Japan's top prize for Classical Japanese music (7).
 
 

Genetic clues to musical ability

If you are not born with an innate musical ability, you may have to accept that music lessons could be a waste of time.

Researchers have found that musical ability is passed from generation to generation through the genes.

The team from St Thomas' Hospital Twin Unit in London also found that one in four adults have problems in recognising tunes and one in 20 have severe tone deafness.

The researchers used a "Distorted Tunes Test" that includes 26 popular musical tunes to compare the responses of 568 volunteer female twins from the St Thomas' Twin Registry.

They found that up to 80% of tune deafness was attributable to genes rather than musical or educational environment.

The results suggest that genes control unique sites in the brain that determine levels of pitch perception.

Genetic differences

Dr Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Unit, said: "The results show that genetic differences in pitch and tune recognition is important not only in the 1 in 20 'tune deaf' individuals but across the whole spectrum of abilities.

"It suggests that for some children, music lessons may only have a limited potential to improve abilities such as pitch recognition."

The researchers now plan to expand their findings to look at other types of hearing impairment. They hope to find the genes involved and unlock the mysteries of the rich variety in musical abilities in humans.

The Distorted Tunes Test was developed by Dr Dennis Drayna and his team at the US National Institute on Deafness in Maryland.

Successful musician

Dr Aaron Williamon, a research fellow at the Royal College of Music, took issue with the findings.

He said the use of the Distorted Tunes Test took music out of context, and questioned whether the researchers had adequately established which twins came from a musical background and which did not.

He said it had been well established that there were three vital components in being a successful musician:

He said: "I would not say there was no such thing as musical talent, that probably plays a role, but there are a lot of other factors.

"If children are interested in music, they should be encouraged."

The research is published in the journal Science.

 

 
Musical Ability An Ancient Trait, Scientists Say

David L. Chandler
c.2001 The Boston Globe
 

It has long been a cliche that music is universal, but now science is proving just how deeply true the old saying really is.

      While scientists can't do much better than the rest of us in defining exactly what music is - although they know it when they hear it - they have shown that human appreciation of music is remarkably ancient, begins astonishingly early in life, and to a surprising extent may be shared by whales, birds and even rats.

      In a pair of articles appearing in the current journal Science, several scientists show that musical appreciation is so deep-seated that it may be one of humanity's oldest activities, and that in fundamental ways it even crosses the lines of species. Through such research, they hope, they may come to understand the human mind better, perhaps even learning important clues about how to overcome damage to the auditory system.

      ``We became human at the point where we started making music,'' Jelle Atema, a biologist with Boston University's program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and co-author of one of the Science papers, said Thursday. But, Atema admits, many animals also produce sounds in ways that, to human ears, meet virtually any definition of music.

      Atema, like several of the researchers involved in the Science papers, straddles the fields of music and science: In addition to his work in biology, he plays the flute and even studied under the renowned flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal. He has painstakingly made exact copies of ancient bone flutes in order to play them and determine the kinds of sounds that our distant ancestors may have been making around their campfires. Another of the researchers, Harvard Medical School's Mark Jude Tramo, is a guitarist who was selected to play at a world's fair at the age of 8 and is a member of the recording artists' group ASCAP.

      ``Do musical sounds in nature reveal a profound bond between all living things?'' asks one of the articles. The evidence that it may is broad and very specific. For example:

      - The ``songs'' of humpback whales follow many of the same, precise rules that are nearly universal in human music, including the nature of the tonal scale, the way themes are introduced and varied, the use of percussive as well as melodic sounds and the structures of rhythms and phrasing.

      - Many species of birds also sing in ways that mimic very closely the rules of human song, including the ways that songs are passed from one generation to another or are shared by a group of peers. Many use note scales similar to those devised by humans, even though an infinite variety of such scales is possible: The canyon wren uses the chromatic scale, while the hermit thrush uses a pentatonic scale. Some even make instruments and play them; the palm cockatoo of Australia, for instance, carefully shapes a drumstick from a twig and holds it in its foot to play on a hollow log.

      - Music goes back to the earliest ages of human prehistory, and sophisticated flutes have been found that date back as much as 53,000 years. The technology used to make these ancient instruments was much more advanced, Atema says, than that used at the same period to produce utilitarian tools like spearpoints and scrapers.

      ``To see that they spent so much time (making instruments) means music was important to them,'' he says.

      Music, some scientists speculate, may even predate human language.

      - A 4-month-old baby can tell the difference between sounds that are dissonant or harmonious, and even premature babies show a range of significant physiological responses - improved oxygen saturation, heart rate and weight gain - to soothing music.

      Tramo, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, says he is fascinated by the complexity of the human brain's response to music.

      ``There is no `music center' in the brain,'' he wrote. Nearly every cognitive part of the brain is involved in listening to music, and when we move to the music many of the motor areas are involved as well. ``Imagine how much of the brain lights up when we dance!''

      But his research on just how the brain processes the sounds of music is much more than just an abstract question or a way of melding his medical and artistic sides. He sees it as a process that can lead to fundamental and important insights.

      ``The experiences we naturally have in our culture, in the arts, teach us a lot about how the brain works,'' Tramo said Thursday. ``The next step, in the next few decades, is going to be to bridge that gap between the arts and the sciences.''

      By learning exactly how the brain processes and decodes the complex mix of tones, rhythms, timbre and melodic progression that make up music, a more comprehensive understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world around us may emerge. In the same way, other scientists are using responses to visual arts as a way of probing the workings of the human visual system.

      ``We really want to understand basic sensory physiology,'' Tramo said. ``That understanding in time is going to help scientists in their efforts to help the deaf to hear, and help the blind to see.''

 

MUSICAL ability is mostly inherited from parents and owes little to upbringing, a study of twins suggests.

The discovery helps to explain why there are so many musical families, from the Strauss and Bach dynasties to the Jacksons, The Corrs and the Gallagher brothers. The scientists behind the study believe that the genetic influence is so strong that music lessons are unlikely to turn a tone deaf child into a budding Mozart.

The findings, published in Science, come from a study of 568 British twin sisters by a team of British and American researchers. Around one in 20 people is completely tone deaf, while one in four has problems recognising tunes. Scientists and teachers have tended to assume that musical talent is mostly influenced by upbringing and that playing music to babies and children can increase their chances of being musical.

Researchers tested this assumption by asking the twin sisters to listen to clips of 26 tunes such as God Save the Queen, Yankee Doodle and Happy Birthday and say which were played wrongly. Half the tunes contained one or two wrong notes.

Identical twins, who share the same genes, tended to have the same levels of musical ability. If one identical twin pinpointed all the mistakes, her sister was likely to detect them all too. But non-identical twins, who share just 50 per cent of the same genes, were less likely to share the same level of musical talent.

Dr Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Centre at St Thomas's Hospital, London where the study took place, believes that up to 80 per cent of "tune deafness" can be blamed on genes rather than environment. He said: "This is just one aspect of musical ability, but it is any important one. If you don't recognise pitch, you are not going to become a great musician.

"Before I did this study I would have guessed that exposure to music would have been more important than genes. But it appears to account for 20 per cent." For those born with the wrong genes, music lessons would have only limited impact, Dr Spector said.

Identical twins Evelyn Brown of Hampton, London, and Alma MacFarlane of Newbury, Berkshire, 49, both scored highly in the tests. Although they had little formal musical education, both can sing in tune and recognise melodies. Mrs MacFarlane's identical twin daughters, 15-year-old Lynsey and Kirstyn, play the flute and clarinet.

 

3 March 2001: [Features] The keys to a quick mind
21 February 2001: [International] Babies tune into the art of talking with gift of perfect pitch
12 January 2001: Twins 'link genes to heart attack'
28 March 2000: Humour does not run in the family, twins show
6 February 1999: How classical music helps children to be well behaved

 

The Field of Music Cognition                    
Ohio State University Music Cognition Group



What is Music Cognition?

A field of inquiry can often be conveniently described by listing some of the questions its practitioners hope to answer. The following questions are ones that help to shape the field of music cognition.

Some of the following questions already have answers -- although most of these answers are provisional or incomplete. Some of the questions will not be resolved in the foreseeable future; some questions are in principle unanswerable. Moreover, some of the questions are undoubtedly malformed and wrong-headed.

A list of recommended reading is available for those wanting to learn more about music cognition.

Some questions that motivate music cognition researchers:


Musical Origins and Musical Character


Musical Skill and Musical Intelligence


Musical Pleasure and Preference


Musical Development


Musical Organization


Music and Memory


Music and Emotion


Music Performance and Improvisation


Music's Influences


Music, Brain and Body


Music, Environment and Culture


Modeling Music Cognition

 

Learning More About Music Cognition

Are you interested in learning more about music cognition? The following reading list is intended to help the curious get started.

The reading list is divided into three levels of difficulty: light reading (indicated in red), medium reading (indicated in blue), and advanced reading (indicated in black).

Light Reading

  • Robert Jourdain. Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination.
    New York: William Morrow and Company 1997; 333 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-688-14236-2 (hardback).

    This is an easy-to-read book written by a science journalist. The book convers a number of topics, including hearing, melody, scales, harmony, tonality, dissonance, perceptual chunking, rhythm, psychological present, musical savants, prodigies, memory, brain, hemispheric specialization, musical preferences and the evoking of pleasure. Scholars will quibble with many points, but Jourdain's book still manages to convey some important concepts.

     

Medium Reading

  • John A. Sloboda. The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music.
    Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985; 268 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-19-852114-6 (hardback); ISBN 0-19-852128-6 (paperback).

    A fine general introduction to the field. Sloboda's book contains chapters on music as a cognitive skill, music & language, music performance, composition & improvisation, listening to music, learning & development, and culture & biology. The principal drawback to this book is that a great deal of further research has been done since it was published in 1985.

     

  • David J. Hargreaves. The Developmental Psychology of Music.
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 227 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-521-30665-5 (hardback); ISBN 0-521-31415-1 (paperback).

    This book provides a helpful summary of music-related research from infancy to adolescence. A strength of this book is the discussion about the formation of musical tastes. Like the Sloboda book, a great volume of research been done since this book was published in 1986.

     

  • W. Jay Dowling and Dane L. Harwood. Music Cognition.
    San Diego: Academic Press, 1986; 239 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-12-221430-7 (hardback only)

    This book is oriented toward more perceptual topics than the Sloboda book. Chapters pertain to the perception of sound, consonance & dissonance, musical scales, melodic organization, musical attention & memory, rhythm, emotion & meaning, and cultural aspects of music. Dowling and Harwood's book is more technical than Sloboda, but shorter.

     

  • Robert Francès. The Perception of Music.
    Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988; 352 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-89859-688-2 (hardback).

    Francès originally published this book in 1958. It was translated into English by Jay Dowling. Although this book is old, it is delightful -- full of originality and insight. It describes a number of unique experiments carried out by Francès. There are chapters on music syntax, the sense of tonality, musical rhetoric & discourse, melodic perception, harmonic perception, aesthetics, music signification & symbolism While much of Francès' work has been superceded by later research, many of his experiments have yet to be followed-up by modern researchers.

     

Advanced Reading

  • Diana Deutsch (editor). The Psychology of Music.
    Second edition. San Diego: Academic Press, 1999; 791 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-12-213564-4 (hardback) ISBN 0-12-213565-2 (paperback)

    This book contains 18 review articles on basic topic written by experts in the field. Chapters include The Nature of Musical Sound (John Pierce), Concert Halls (Manfred Schroeder), Music and the Auditory System (Norman Weinberger), Perception of Musical Tones (Rudolf Rasch & Reinier Plomp), Timbre (Jean-Claude Risset & David Wessel), Perception of Singing (Johan Sundberg), Intervals, Scales, and Tuning (Ed Burns), Absolute Pitch (Dixon Ward), Grouping Mechanisms (Diana Deutsch), Processing of Pitch Combinations (Diana Deutsch), Neural Networks and Tonality (Jamshed Bharucha), Hierarchy, Expectation and Style (Eugene Narmour), Rhythm (Eric Clarke), Music Performance (Alf Gabrielsson), Musical Development (Jay Dowling), Musical Ability (Rosamund Shuter-Dyson), Neurological Aspects of Music (Oscar Marin & David Perry), Cross-cultural Music Perception and Cognition (Edward Carterette & Roger Kendall).

     

  • Carol Krumhansl. Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch.
    Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990; 288 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-19-505475-X (hardback).

    This book conveys the results of Krumhansl's seminal studies of pitch-related perceptual organization. The book principally addresses questions related to the perception of key. How is key perceptually established? When a modulation occurs, how quickly does a sense of the new key develop? Is a sense of the initial key maintained after the modulation? Can listeners attend to two tonalities simultaneously? Is there a uniquely "atonal" way of perceiving musical passages? Such questions through a number of important perceptual experiments. An online book review is available.

     

  • Richard Parncutt. Harmony: A Psychoacoustical Approach.
    Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1989; 166 pages of main text.
    ISBN 0-387-51279-9 (hardback only).

    This is a technical book that provides a stimulating modern theory of harmony. The theory essentially extends and embellishes research by the reknowned psychoacoustician, Ernst Terhardt. Although the book describes how physiological aspects of hearing influence the perception of pitch and harmony, the theory essentially regards pitch and harmony as learned phenomena that arise from exposure to typical complex tones in the environment. An online book review is available.

     

  • David Huron. Tone and Voice: A Derivation of the Rules of Voice-leading from Perceptual Principles.
    University of California Press, Music Perception.

    This lengthy article provides a detailed technical explanation of the origins of the traditional rules of voice-leading. The article identifies why many composers have organized their part-writing according to established practices, and also accounts for many of the deviations from these practices. Explanations are offered as to why unisons should be avoided, why part-crossing sounds "bad", why chords are spaced the way they are, why consecutive fifths and octaves can be problematic, and why composers avoid exposed octaves. The complete text is available online.

     

  • Further advanced readings pertaining to music cognition can be found in the principal scholarly journals of the field.