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The Genesis of Music and Language Author(S): Bryan G. Levman Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol The Genesis of Music and Language Author(s): Bryan G. Levman Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 36, No. 2, (Spring - Summer, 1992), pp. 147-170 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/851912 Accessed: 15/07/2008 17:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org VOL.36, No. 2 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY SPRING/SUMMER1992 The Genesis of Music and Language BRYANG. LEVMAN TORONTO,ONTARIO his article proposes to evince evidence in support of the hypothesis that language and music evolved out of a common "proto-faculty"which was primarilymusical in nature.1Because the subject of musical genesis and the relationship of music and language are topics which have been very controversial, it may well help to start by orienting the reader with a brief survey of the literature in the field. Authors have adopted three primary positions: (1) that language and music developed along separate paths and are in effect two completely different faculties, (2) that music developed out of language, or at least was chronologically later than language, and (3) that language developed out of music, or both developed from a common "proto-faculty." Implicit in the work of most glosso-geneticists2 is position one. This may be because these scholars-usually linguists, anthropologists, psycholo- gists, philosophers-know little about music, for though they often make the point that language can carry semantic meaning in intonation, most do not posit an evolutionary connection. In fact the vast majorityof investigators do not even consider the possible role of music in language development. Instead they see language as (1) primarilygestural in origin, either through bodily movements (Hewes 1983) or through the manipulation of the mouth and vocal tract as the gestural instrument (Foster 1983; Pulleyblank 1983); (2) the result of a primitive representational system which primeval humans developed to help navigate the environment (Bickerton 1990); (3) generated by forces for social cohesion and development like the need to communicate between intermarryinggroups and the discovery of tool-making technolo- gies (Livingstone 1983); (4) fundamentally mimetic, in that primitive humans imitated sounds in their environment (Plato 1937), perhaps to assure greater success in hunting (Fischer 1983); (5) fundamentally emotive and affective, with the first word-sounds originating in instinctive expressive declarations of species identification, warning calls, cries for help, and so forth (Von Raffler-Engel 1983). As will be demonstrated below, some of these views ? 1992 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 148 Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer 1992 have important implications for the relationship of language and music; however, few scholars make an explicit connection between the two. One anthropologist (Livingstone 1973:25) has suggested that humans "could sing long before they could talk and that singing was in fact a prerequisite to speech and hence language,"but he laterrepudiated this position (1983:180); and two linguists, after detailed comparisons of the emotional patterns in speech intonation and music, have postulated a common origin for both faculties (Fonagy and Magdics 1963). There is also a significant body of literaturein the fields of ethology and child psychology which demonstrates the importance of articulated tone in communication and language acqui- sition which this paper will examine in support of its thesis. Position two, that music evolved out of language, was first promulgated by the sociologist Herbert Spencer (1857). His view was that the distinctive traits of song were simply the traits of emotional speech intensified and systematized. Thus the pitch, intervals, loudness, timbre, and rate of variation of the voice-all the modulating factors of the emotions-become exaggerated and transformed by the force of great emotion into song. Presumably, Spencer's position was influenced by Darwin's view that music originated from the love calls of primates during courtship; Darwin himself disagreed with Spencer's interpretations,maintaining the more narrow view that "musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex" ([1871]1981 vol. 2:336), and that music then became firmly associated with the passions. Darwin thought that music probably came before language (ibid.:337), although he did not draw an explicit evolutionary link between the two faculties. Musicologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries adopt a variety of different views, though most seem to subscribe to position one or two: that music and language were separate faculties or that music developed out of language. Richard Wallaschek, for example, believes that music arose from a primary rhythmic impulse in humans which was first manifested in dance-play, the result of a "surplusvigour" exceeding the energies required or immediate needs (1891:375-76). In his view neither speech nor music originated one from the other, but both arose from an identical primitive stage (ibid.:383). ErnstNewman also asserts that music was independent of speech in origin, and maintains that humans possess a musical faculty that must have existed much earlier than speech in the order of time: "man certainly expressed his feelings in pure indefinite sound long before he had learned to agree with his fellows to attach certain meanings to certain stereotyped sounds" ([1905]1969:210-11). In examining the various theories of music origin up to 1930, musicologist Siegfried Nadel also rejects the Darwinian and Spencerian positions out of hand. Both Karl Bucher's view The Genesis of Music and Language 149 that music developed out of concerted rhythmical labour and CarlStumpfs position that music originated as a more efficient "acoustic sign language" for long distance communication are discussed and dismissed. Nadel's view is that music is an out-of-the-ordinary, supernatural language which has been superadded to speech by a process of what he calls "transference"- emotional experience carried over into artisticexpression. Music is therefore primarilya language of the gods and the demons, a language of invocation and exorcism, and Nadel makes the important point of the ubiquity of religious and ritualisticsongs in tribalcultures (1930). Among contemporary scholars, C. M. Bowra, echoing Wallaschek, believes that music was first manifested in the dance and that song developed by fitting standardized, formulaic sequences of (speech) sounds to pre-existing melodies (1962). Although music was post-linguistic, its motivation was primarily rhythmic, and only secondarily vocal (Wallaschek 1891, 1893). Curt Sachs originally suggested that music may have originated from speech or from emotion, calling the resulting styles logogenic and pathogenic (1943:41), but he later seems to change these views (1965:38). His dominant attitude is ironic detachment, rejecting all theories of musical origin as wrong or unprovable, and preferring to concentrate on primitive musics which are accessible for study (1948:1-2). This view is also shared byJohn Blacking who believes that music is a species-specific biological human impulse, separate from lan- guage, which is inseparable from the social context in which it develops (1973:55). Bruno Nettl hypothesizes that at one time humans had a kind of communication that shared elements of both language and music, and that the two articulatorymedia of contrastive vowels and pitches eventually took divergent evolutionary paths (1956:136-37, 1983:166). The evolution of music from speech is a position that is also attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Sachs 1943:19; Nadel 1930:535); however his view is closer to Nettl's, that music and speech have a common origin, a faculty which he believed to be primarily musical in nature. For Rousseau, the first words expressed the feelings of love, hate, pity, and anger, so that language was originally vital, singable, and passionate before it became simple and methodical ([1761]1966:12,chapter two). Primitivelanguage was sung, not spoken, its accents (pitch), quantity, and rhythm articulating the passions in an imitative, iconic fashion (ibid.:15, chapter four). Eventually language becomes more regular and less passionate, substituting ideas for feelings. Accent diminishes and consonantal articulation increases:
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