This is cool....

[sleigh]

A Scientific American article talks about a Tufts University study suggesting an interesting link between music and language. In music, minor chords are used to indicate sadness, while major chords suggest more uplifting feelings. The difference between a minor and major triad is the relationship of the tonic note to the third note of the scale: in a minor chord, the third note of the scale is played down a half step: a C Major triad consists of the notes C, E, and G, while a C Minor triad is C, Eb, and G. To borrow from the article's examples, think Happy Birthday, a song in a major key vs. Eleanor Rigby, a song in a minor key.

What the study found was that in analyzing the relative pitches of people speaking various phrases, there is a corresponding pitch difference when trying to convey sadness in speech: the use of the minor third. Their hypothesis is that a "...possible explanation for why music and speech might share the same code for expressing emotion is the idea that both emerged from a common evolutionary predecessor, dubbed "musilanguage" by Steven Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby (Vancouver), British Columbia."

Interesting... though I suspect myself that the hypothesis is wrong, and that it's a western cultural phenomena -- that after centuries of the current Western musical scale we're so used to "minor key = sadness" that we unconsciously pitch our language to match that. Other cultures, which don't use our musical scale, I suspect, also won't have the same sensibility in their spoken language.

The study only looked at American speakers; they hope to expand the study to see if the same holds true across cultures and countries. I'll be interested to see the results.

Comments

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the cultural bias in language being a possible factor. On a related note, when I took music theory in college, the professor said I was the first student he'd ever had who used minor harmonies in the first take-home assignment. I attributed that to my years in synagogue choirs, as most Jewish music uses minor keys.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Nice anecdote... and it reminds me that klezmer music is often pitched to a minor key, yet is "up" music for dancing.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

It's a Western cultural phenomena that goes all the way back to Plato. Quick explanation here: http://www.pianonoise.com/Article.Plato.htm

Plato had all sorts of theories about the emotional/psychological content of music, based around the modal tuning system of his time. Our Major/minor keys are relics of these earlier, modal tuning sets. Plato thought that one mode was tragic and one was heroic and another would make boys effeminate and another would promote State interests. Some of that got passed down into early church music (plainchant). Since tunes were shamelessly recycled and nobody cared in the olden days (think Greensleeves/What Child is This, only they did it all the time), Platonic modal thought crept into secular music as well.

So alas, hearing minor mode as "sad" or "haunting" is mostly cultural conditioning. Even so, I think there's something going on with the idea of "bright" keys (like D or E) versus "mellow" ones (like Bb) and Plato's idea of music being able to manipulate people's emotions. Movie music, themepark music, advertising music and Musak all come to mind. It might still be based in cultural conditioning, but it's powerful cultural conditioning that affects us in similar ways to word-language and can be used almost subliminally.

Anyhow, I suspect you know all this already. This subject really gets my inner music geek all excited and then I start rambling on. :)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I'm with you -- the article excited the musical geek in me also, even if I heartily disagree with the hypothesis they cite. I too think that minor chords = sadness is cultural.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Most importantly I want them to look at Chinese. First, their music follows a very different system than ours--and to Western ears sounds like a lot of minor scales and discordant accidentals. Second, I forget if both Cantonese and Mandarin are tonal languages, but at least one of them is fairly rigid in how things are inflected, because the inflection itself can be the vocabulary. What to Western ears sounds merely like two different emotional tones on a sound is in Chinese two entirely different words.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Chinese (or Japanese) culture would be a fantastic choice, I agree, especially since both languages sound "flat" and unstressed to Western ears. I believe it's Mandarin where the tone of a vowel can change the word...

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I want to mention that when I was a kid (and early blooming musician) in Argentina, I was surprised to note that there are a lot of Argentine happy songs in minor keys, and sad ones in majors (should I say "modes," not "keys"?) I had already picked up from my musical parents that this is not how things are done in the USA. So Argentina would be yet another place for cultural musicologists to investigate (as well as Russia, where virtually all the music is in minors).

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Nate -- nice little data point there. As I've said above, my own hypothesis is that minor chord = sadness is a European cultural construct.

[chasophonic.livejournal.com]

Several years ago another musician I used to see at open mike, showed me an article purporting that babies respond negatively to sour notes. Sour being off scale, a little flat or sharp. They responded positively to "good" notes.(This article was not a primary source.)

I said this was nonsense. Scales are cultural and vary greatly. The response was learned. According to the article, this was supposed to happen prior to learned bias. Again, nonsense.

This led me on a quest that will culminate in a "Music and the mind," panel at Minicon next year. I would love to have you on that panel. I am Musician GOH as well.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I'm with you, Chas -- there are too many modalities and scales that sound 'dissonant' to Western ears for me to buy that babies who haven't been acculturated yet would perceive certain intervals as "sour notes" and respond accordingly.

I haven't been to a Minicon in decades, but if I happen to make it to this one, I'd be happy to sit on the panel with you -- and congratulations on being Musical GoH: that's a well-deserved accolade!