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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.
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.