source file: m1588.txt
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 14:47:32 -0800

Subject: Infantile JI

From: alves@orion.ac.hmc.edu (Bill Alves)

Steve Soderberg wrote:
>
>Given the choice between baby formula, pablum, strained carrots, apple
>juice, etc. and beef bourgignon, stuffed pork chops, single malt scotch, a
>complex wine, etc. -- I'll take the complexity of the adult diet any day.
>I would no more try to make a child sip whiskey than I would try to make
>him/her listen to Schoenberg.  Would you draw any conclusions from 200
>children who spit out pate other than that children probably don't like
>pate?????
>
This is a great response, but it only addresses one possible rebuttal to
the implications given in the article, that, naturally, our tastes evolve
from infancy to adulthood. The writer of the article might say that such a
response misses their point that any "pleasantness" of consonant intervals
is innate and not learned. Leaving aside the difficulty of translating
infant preference to a "pleasing perception" in adults, I would not argue
that a 3/2 is innately perceived in a certain way among most people around
the world.

But to extrapolate such a narrow and not unexpected finding to art is to
misunderstand what art is. The journalist seems to naively think that all
music aside from Schoenberg is consonant and that this study shows that the
amount of consonance should correlate to the success of the music. In fact,
there are only a very few truly "pan-consonant" pieces of music in the
West, generally from early 15th century Northern Europe. Those pieces are
probably not outcompeting Schoenberg in record sales.

This is not to say that innate perceptions don't influence art, but music
is a complex manipulation of psychoacoustics, psychology, and culture
towards the intended ends of the composer. (I almost said "expressive"
ends, but that is a word often interpreted in such a way that exclude a lot
of the world's art.)

Incidentally, it's interesting that they are willing to concede Indonesian
slendro "fifths," which average 720 cents, as "close enough," but not
Schoenberg. I wonder if they made any similar claims on the visual arts
when it was found that babies prefer yellow at a certain age?

Bill

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^ Bill Alves                                      email: alves@hmc.edu ^
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