To A Chimp, It’s all the same if it’s Beethoven or Bieber
Primate biologists reported today that chimpanzees are utterly indifferent to human music. It’s all the same to a chimp if it’s Beethoven or Justin Bieber.
“Of course,” says Professor of Jazz Peter Kenagy. He writes:
Humans have been doing musical and creative things that set them apart from others for about 50,000 years. So it’s no surprise that only humans appreciate human music. Each of the more intelligent animals (dolphins, whales, primates, birds) communicates with some kind of speech, often tonal, that sounds sort of musical. While they may not understand our music, we don’t really understand and appreciate their sound forms either.
Whipoorwill
I think it’s sort of presumptuous to assume other animals should appreciate our music, since music is not simply sound waves. Music exists in a social context. Music makes
meaning within our human experience. The hope that animals would appreciate our music says that we are proud of our humanity, and we want other “lesser” animals to get it. In us, Bach lights up the human brain in neuroscience studies in ways that go beyond other music. But animals, who may not respond to Bach in any way we can discern, nevertheless live more in tune with the sound world than we do. In ways humans no longer do, animals rely on sound and hearing to survive.
Stravinsky said, perhaps a little facetiously, that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all” (An Autobiography, 1936). Since most humans don’t appreciate good music when they hear it, why would a chimp?
Jazz musician Eric Dolphy famously practiced flute with birds. Since the Renaissance, composers have incorporated bird songs into western music . Birds might speak with a more musical vocabulary than we do, notwithstanding their smaller brains. There’s no end to the ways that music and natural sound interrelate.
“Inner Flight,” (1960), Eric Dolphy flute
And who says we appreciate great music so keenly? Consider this anecdote I read the other day about a great musician, a great instrument, and a sublime piece of music:
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
Joshua Bell talks about music in the metro and music’s humanizing power here.