Is consonance a biological or a cultural phenomenon? [in 333 words]

Chick in consonance experiment (Chiandetti & Vallortigara, 2011).

The distinction between consonance and dissonance has long occupied a central place in the scientific study of auditory perception and music cognition. Consonant intervals are typically described as stable, harmonious, or pleasing, whereas dissonant intervals are often characterized as tense, unstable, or even harsh. Yet even these seemingly straightforward descriptions quickly lead to methodological debate. 

A central difficulty arises from the frequent conflation of “dissonance” with “roughness.” Roughness refers to a physiological effect caused by closely spaced frequencies interacting on the basilar membrane of the inner ear. This phenomenon is measurable, consistent, and largely universal across listeners. Consonance, however, is not reducible to physiology alone. Recent research emphasizes that consonance is a multidimensional construct, shaped by both acoustic properties such as harmonicity and by layers of cognitive and cultural familiarity (Lahdelma & Eerola, 2020). 

This controversy can be framed around two major questions (Harrison, 2021). First, do humans possess an innate preference for consonance over dissonance? Second, if such a preference exists, how might it be explained in evolutionary terms? A landmark study by McDermott et al. (2016) with the Tsimane’, an Amazonian group minimally exposed to Western music, found no consistent preference for consonant over dissonant intervals. Their conclusion was that what many listeners call “pleasant” is primarily shaped by cultural experience. 

This interpretation has been vigorously challenged. Bowling et al. (2017) cite empirical evidence from human infants (Trainor et al., 2002) and even non-human animals (Chiandetti & Vallortigara, 2011) that points toward at least some innate, hardwired auditory sensitivity. If so, consonance may reflect evolutionary selective pressures, possibly related to the spectral composition of human vocalizations and the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying pitch perception and auditory scene analysis. 

In the end, consonance appears to be neither purely biological nor purely cultural. Our ears detect roughness and harmonicity, but our minds interpret these sensations through cultural frameworks. What sounds stable in one tradition may sound unfamiliar in another. The consonance controversy thus highlights music cognition as an intricate interplay between biology and culture. 

N.B. These entries are part of a new series of explorations on the notion of Spectral Percepts (in 333 words each).

References

Bowling, D. L., Hoeschele, M., Gill, K. Z. & Fitch, W. T. (2017). The nature and nurture of musical consonance. Music Perception, 118–121. 

Chiandetti, C. & Vallortigara, G. (2011). Chicks like consonant music. Psychological Science, 22(10), 1270– 1273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611418244 

 

Harrison, P. M. C. (2021). Three Questions concerning Consonance Perception. Music Perception, 337–339. https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2021.38.3.337 

 

Lahdelma, I. & Eerola, T. (2020). Cultural familiarity and musical expertise impact the pleasantness of consonance/dissonance but not its perceived tension. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 8693. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65615-8 

 

McDermott, J. H., Schultz, A. F., Undurraga, E. A. & Godoy, R. A. (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature, 25, 21–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18635 

 

Trainor, L. J. & Unrau, A. (2012). Development of Pitch and Music Perception. In Human Auditory Development (pp. 223–254). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1421-6_8

Why does a well-tuned modern piano not sound out-of-tune?

Karlheinz Stockhausen is listening.

"Neue Musik ist anstrengend", wrote Die Zeit some time ago: "Der seit Pythagoras’ Zeiten unternommene Versuch, angenehme musikalische Klänge auf ganzzahlige Frequenzverhältnisse der Töne zurückzuführen, ist schon mathematisch zum Scheitern verurteilt. Außereuropäische Kulturen beweisen schließlich, dass unsere westliche Tonskala genauso wenig naturgegeben ist wie eine auf Dur und Moll beruhende Harmonik: Die indonesische Gamelan-Musik und Indiens Raga-Skalen klingen für europäische Ohren schräg."

The definition of music as “sound” wrongly suggests that music, like all natural phenomena, adheres to the laws of nature. In this case, the laws would be the acoustical patterns of sound such as the (harmonic) relationships in the structure of the dominant tones, which determine the timbre. This is an idea that has preoccupied primarily the mathematically oriented music scientists, from Pythagoras to Hermann von Helmholtz.

The first, and oldest, of these scientists, Pythagoras, observed, for example, that “beautiful” consonant intervals consist of simple frequency relationships (such as 2:3 or 3:4). Several centuries later, Galileo Galilei wrote that complex frequency relationships only “tormented” the eardrum.

But, for all their wisdom, Pythagoras, Galilei, and like-minded thinkers got it wrong. In music, the “beautiful,” so-called “whole-number” frequency relationships rarely occur—in fact, only when a composer dictates them. The composer often even has to have special instruments built to achieve them, as American composer Harry Partch did in the twentieth century.

Contemporary pianos are tuned in such a way that the sounds produced only approximate all those beautiful “natural” relationships. The tones of the instrument do not have simple whole number ratios, as in 2:3 or 3:4. Instead, they are tuned so that every octave is divided into twelve equal parts (a compromise to facilitate changes of key). The tones exist, therefore, not as whole number ratios of each other, but as multiples of 12√2 (1:1.05946).

According to Galilei, each and every one of these frequency relationships are “a torment” to the ear. But modern listeners experience them very differently. They don’t particularly care how an instrument is tuned, otherwise many a concertgoer would walk out of a piano recital because the piano sounded out of tune. It seems that our ears adapt quickly to “dissonant” frequencies. One might even conclude that whether a piano is “in tune” or “out of tune” is entirely irrelevant to our appreciation of music. 

[fragment from Honing, 2021; Published here earlier in 2012]

Honing, H. (2012). Een vertelling. In S. van der Maas, C. Hulshof, & P. Oldenhave (Eds.), Liber Plurum Vocum voor Rokus de Groot (pp. 150-154). Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam (ISBN 978-90-818488-0-0).Honing, H. (2021). Music Cognition: The Basics. Routledge. doi 10.4324/9781003158301Kursell, Julia (2011). Kräftespiel. Zur Dissymmetrie von Schall und Wahrnehmung. Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, 2 (1), 24-40 DOI: 10.4472_zfmw.2010.0003Whalley, Ian. (2006). William A. Sethares: Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (Second Edition). Computer Music Journal, 30 (2) DOI: 10.1162/comj.2006.30.2.92

What makes two melodies feel like the same song? [in 333 words]

(cf. Krumhansl, 1989).

One of the most intriguing questions in music cognition research is also one of the simplest: when are two melodies experienced as the same?

At first glance, the answer might seem obvious — they share the same notes, in the same order, with the same rhythm. But a closer look, across cultures and even across species, reveals a more complex picture. What our brains latch onto when recognizing a tune involves a web of spectral percepts — the fundamental features of sound that guide humans and other animals in interpreting auditory patterns. This may sound like a niche research topic, but it lies at the heart of debates about authorship, originality, and musical ownership.

Consider hearing a melody played in a different key or on an unfamiliar instrument. Most people can still recognize it. How is this possible? Explanations often point to intervallic structure — the sequence of pitch intervals between notes — the contour, which is the overall shape of a melody as it rises and falls, or timbre, often described as the “color” of sound, including brightness, texture, and loudness.

For decades, music research treated timbre as secondary — something layered over supposedly “meaningful” musical features like pitch and rhythm (cf. McAdams & Cunible, 1992). Increasing evidence now suggests timbre is not merely decorative but a core perceptual building block. Timbre may also support “relative listening,” the ability to track patterns of change across different features. Exploring it carefully could reveal flexible and universal aspects of music cognition previously underestimated.

Recognizing that humans and non-human animals may rely on different spectral cues is equally crucial for understanding music’s evolutionary roots. A melody meaningful to humans may not register as such for a zebra finch — and vice versa.

By broadening music cognition research to include timbre, spectral contour, and species-specific strategies, scientists hope to uncover the shared perceptual foundations of musicality. Such work moves us closer to answering a deceptively simple but deeply complex question: what truly makes two melodies feel like the same song?

N.B. These entries are part of a new series of explorations on the notion of Spectral Percepts (in 333 words each).

References

McAdams, S, & Cunible, J-C (1992). Perception of timbral analogies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 336, 383-389. 

Krumhansl, C. L. (1989). Why is musical timbre so hard to understand? In S. Nielzén & O. Olsson (Eds.), Structure and perception of electroacoustic sound and music (pp. 43– 53). Elsevier.