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| Imaginative Minds: An Interdisciplinary Symposium30 April-1 May 2004The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AHMusic, science and cultureIan Cross1 'Music' can appear to be fundamentally different things to the sciences and to musicology. For the sciences, music is complexly patterned sound or the experience of such structured sound. For current musicology and ethnomusicology, musics are indissociable from the cultural contexts in which they occur, yielding meaning-centred as opposed to structure-centred approaches. While these different conceptions of music have afforded valuable insights, the methods
and, in particular, the objects of study of the sciences and of musicology seem irreconcilable. This paper will suggest that a radical redefinition of 'music' may provide ways of understanding
music as both biologically-grounded structure and as culturally-embedded practice. It will investigate some of the consequences and potential implications of this radical re-definition, amongst which is the possibility that the modern human capacity for culture may have been supported and consolidated by the emergence of human musicality.
1. Reader in Music and Science, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge |
