Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol/Iss. 112(29) National Academy of Sciences Washington, D.C Published In Pages: 8987-8992
By Savage, Patrick E., Brown, Steven, Sakai, Emi, Currie, Thomas E.

Abstract

The authors develop CantoCore, an expansion of Lomax's Cantometrics scheme, in order to code for additional candidate musical universals. No musical feature occurs with absolute universality, but several features occur with statistically significant frequency after controlling for historical relatedness, and an additional set of features were found to be universally related to each other. The authors highlight the role of these features in human coordination and cohesion, as well as their their utility to the fields of musical cognition and evolution.

Documents and Hypotheses Filed By:jack.dunnington emily.pitek