Okay, first an apology and clarification. I don't believe that cultural context has no influence on what music people find pleasing. Rather, it has a HUGE influence. I apologize that I failed to convey that clearly, and in doing so, got you all upset. Sorry! No cultural imperialism intended! Would you like a cup of tea?
To continue my clarification, though, while I believe that cultural context has a huge influence on what music people find pleasing, I don't believe that it completely determines what music people find pleasing. I think, rather, that people's taste in music is determined by a complicated mixture of many factors.
One of these factors, the factor I was getting at in my earlier comments, is the fact that when we look at the physical frequencies of pitches certain very popular intervals, we find that they're all mathematical ratios of low integers.
For example, an octave is two frequencies in a 2:1 ratio. A perfect fifth is two frequencies in a 3:2 ratio. A perfect fourth is two frequencies in a 4:3 ratio.
Now, I'm not totally sure about what this implies, but it seems like the evidence points to this conclusion: Humans are probably are hard-wired wired to pay attention to these particular frequency ratios, and this attention affects our taste in music.
It doesn't determine our taste in music. It just affects it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-10-20 12:47 pm (UTC)To continue my clarification, though, while I believe that cultural context has a huge influence on what music people find pleasing, I don't believe that it completely determines what music people find pleasing. I think, rather, that people's taste in music is determined by a complicated mixture of many factors.
One of these factors, the factor I was getting at in my earlier comments, is the fact that when we look at the physical frequencies of pitches certain very popular intervals, we find that they're all mathematical ratios of low integers.
For example, an octave is two frequencies in a 2:1 ratio. A perfect fifth is two frequencies in a 3:2 ratio. A perfect fourth is two frequencies in a 4:3 ratio.
Now, I'm not totally sure about what this implies, but it seems like the evidence points to this conclusion: Humans are probably are hard-wired wired to pay attention to these particular frequency ratios, and this attention affects our taste in music.
It doesn't determine our taste in music. It just affects it.