Raga CDs of the months (03/10): Music & Language (part 1 of 2)

The relationship between music and language, between sounds and the spoken word or vocals is a very special one.

 

Busto di Pitagora. Copia romana di originale greco. Musei Capitolini, Roma. (Source: Wikipedia (ENG))

The grammarians of Sanskrit, the ancient Indian science language regard music and language as divergent aspects of one and the same phenomena.

With Indian classial music (Hindustani, Carnatic) there is a multiplicity in common under the topic to “music and language “, which is the bases of the occidental harmonics, dated back to the founder of the mathematical analysis of music by Pythagoras of Samos who had evidenced empirically the harmonic intervals – approximately written before 500 B.C. .

Music seems to be reflected far less vaguely in us than it had been granted so far. Rather our perceptions of sounds are defined very exactly by outlined possibilities and borders. The audiomental system has greater importance than one had assumed recently.

dates of broadcasting…
part 1: 16th March 2010 – 09:00 p.m. (METZ)
( part 2: 20th April 2010 – 09:00 p.m. MESTZ )
broadcasting plan | streaming (Internet Radio & Mobile Radio) | podCast

As shown by recent studies the perception of music and ‘music making’ incorporate nearby almost all regions of the brain. The widespread acceptance that music is processed in the right brain hemisphere and language in the left had completely been wrong. The current research shows that language and music are assimilated almost identically. The profound emotional content of music, from felicity to sadness affects particularly stimulating our brain and also produces frequently physically intensively perceptible reactions to the listener.

Music settles visibly in our life, in brain activities which are measurable nowadays and made vividly visible with modern medical imaging techniques e.g. (functional) magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) or Magnetoencephalography (MEG), see picture below.

In part 1 of 2 IMC – India meets Classic presents the structure of music & language. The  following broadcasting (part 2) will bring light up the social psychological meaning of music for individual and community interaction processes influenced by the nature of music as communication form.

 

Stefan Koelsch: Nature Neuroscience 7(3), 2004: Music, Language and Meaning: Brain Signatures of Semantic Processing

short paper (pdf: German | English)

Note: IMC OnAir’s radio show “music and language” in two parts (2x 58 min.) represents a fundamental introduction regarding the multiplicity of sciences involved (music ethnology,  anthropology, language and social sciences, neuro sciences, psychology, computer sciences (artificial intelligence) among others).