Today I got quite a bit of pleasure from listening to music - from both the softer and harder ends of the musical spectrum. I find music has the ability to give at times a very special, almost euphoric kind of pleasure. And it's ability to do so completely perplexes me. I'd like to know why music is so imporant to us and can evoke emotion in all of us, and how it came to be so.
I guess you could call me an evolutionist, I believe that which ever traits we have, we have them because of natural selection from evolutionary pressures on our ancestors. We fear, for instance, because those who didn't posses such a thing as fear didn't last long enough to leave children. We enjoy certain foods because of some personal pyschology perhaps, but more broadly I believe it's because of natural selection - and while I might not know the exact mechanism, it's probably the case that if we tend to die young if we don't get nutrient A, then those people who tended to like, and thus seek out essential nutrient A, tended not to die before they left children.
Any aspect of ourselves should have a reason for being so. The pleasures of music seem to be common to us all. But why? I don't get it. What advantage did early humans have in an ability to find pleasure out of very particular sounds. There could be social reasons, but as far as I'm concerned, I've not yet heard a convincing explanation as to why we find pleasure in music. I once read a theory to do with the fact that we inherited an inclination to be sensitive to rhythm from fish, but I wasn't entirely convinced.
Hard Music
Hyperviolet - by Pig Destroyer
Accessible Losses - by Darkest Hour
As the earth spins round - by Sikth, but sample misses the best bits :(Today I roamed the streets a little melancholy - with a certain someone in mind. To lighten my mood I decided to play a little Pig Destroyer, on a metal mix that my friend Mr Michael Rayner recently compiled for me. This, along with some other tracks, somehow focused my mind, and made the task of walking down the street that much more pleasurable.
I'm new to 'metal'. I used to enjoy some songs bordering metal, but I never quite crossed the
death growl threshold. My friend is an avid metal fan, so I asked him to compile a sampling of metal music to help me see why metal is so great. Indeed, its combination of death growls (which become rather quaint, I think), virtuosic guitar and drums, grunging assonance and leading, blasting rhythm is quite hyptnotic. 'As the earth goes round' has a particularly beautiful ending, lulling you away to a contemplative state, underscored by a tyranny of bass beats.
I just have to be careful not to put the volume too loud on my iPod because I came home tonight with a ring in my ear, similar to when you come home from a club. It lasted about an hour.
Soft MusicAn die musik (an Ode to Music) - by Franz Schubert
Clarinet Quintet in A, K581, Larghetto - by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Prelude No.4 Opus 28 - by Frédéric ChopinSofter music also gives me great pleasure. I'm not the best piano player in the world, but when I got home tonight I completely unwound myself by playing some tunes on the piano - Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert - some of my favourite composers. I'm sure plenty of people have written on the pleasures of Mozart, and have attempted to explain its origins in pyschology or perhaps mathematics or both. I don't know why it gives pleasure, just that it does. It can take me away to a beautiful, melancholy place, it can bring elation, and such joy and sadness. The two sometimes get confused.
