9 - Music through the hearing machine

Summary

Our hearing system selected artefact sounds with particular characteristics that appear to have been the basis of pitched music from the beginning. What we would really like to know is whether our hearing system provides reasons for liking such sounds, but no one can explain that, despite the vast literature which purports to do so. All we can ask is whether the hearing machinery presents sounds of the selected kinds to the cortex in a form which reveals its unique characteristics, and would facilitate selection. Does it, for example, show the patterns of simple intervals and chords we have described?

This account of hearing is a small selected part of a huge, complex and sometimes puzzling body of knowledge, in which there have been major discoveries in the second half of the twentieth century and some within its last decade. In his book The Psychology of Hearing, Brian Moore (1982), whom I hold in great respect, ends one chapter with a reference to two other books and adds ‘but you may find their interpretations are somewhat different’. What follows is how I interpret our knowledge of the hearing system specifically in relation to music. It is certainly over-simplified, and it may suffer the same fate as previous attempts to relate scientific discovery with music put forward by Helmholtz and by others, but even if it does, it will not change anything about music I have discussed in the other chapters. In science we continuously change our ideas when new facts are discovered. Perhaps one day, musicians will change some of their beliefs too.

I think the way in which music is described by orthodox terminology and in textbooks is more difficult to understand than anything in this chapter and the next one. But as a result of the discussion so far, I hope the reader may already have a different if not a better understanding of music, regardless of whether what follows provides satisfying answers to the questions which have been raised in the previous chapters. One obvious feature of music: rhythm, is missing. I have left that until after an account of how we hear, because we shall then at least understand why hearing is so sensitive to time.