>music.... representing a negligible percentage of the total of
>music performed.
Sounds like you need to get to more concerts! : )
Chamber music is, of course, not only a huge percentage
of music performed, as if such a statistic could mean anything,
but it is indeed the vanguard of musical development.
For proof, turn to Beethoven's Late Quartets.
>That the twelfth root of two
>is the 'natural' division of the octave can hardly be denied - the
>universally acknowledged masterpieces of the classical and popular
>repertoires surely confirm this as fact.
Equal temperament is a very special thing, and for all the time
I've spent studying tuning, I still don't understand why such a
simple idea took so long to hit upon. Nevertheless, the natural
division of the octave, as demonstrated by every human culture
with the interesting exception of the Balinese, is the fifth, or a
frequency ratio of three over two. That is what leads to the scale
we know (successive applications of three over two) and that
is what leads to the alternative scale systems I mentioned. Far
from sterile, these systems are rooted in the fundamental
nature of music.
Why HAS a week seven days? That is an interesting question. If you
have any insight, please share it with me, either privately or on
evolution-list.
>However, interesting as these matters are, you have failed to address
>the nub of my question: "What advantage does a singing hominid have in
>the evolutionary scheme of things?"
I'm not here to defend evolution as a concept, first of all. I think that
our
musicality is in fact the finest evidence of the rootedness (orientation?)
of
homo in (toward?) the divine, whatever means brought it about. Some
argue that homo sapiens was singing before it was even speaking,
propter hoc, so I'd say the bio-cultural advantages of organizing our
brains around musical vibrations are pretty deep.
Do anthropologist/evolutionists ignore this topic? If Vernon is right and
they do, that is indeed a gross failing!
Brendan Frost