The biological constraints on musical structure as the foundations of musical essence

Abstract

The diversity of musical phenomena seems to suggest that the answer to the question, “what is music?” depends on culture. This stands in contrast to the fact that all cultures use sounds, either as the building blocks of speech or music, depending on their interpretation by the nervous system. Although musical structure is influenced by the culture-specific characteristics of music, certain properties of music such as pitch class or musical pulse are music specific phenomena. It is therefore proposed that musical essence is based on a perceptive bias that is the result of the evolution of Homo sapiens and that musical essence lies in the organization of the human brain.