L6 Lecture Series #9: Origins of Music

Head of Psychology, Dr Fancourt gave an interesting lecture to the Lower 6 on the origins of music. Isabella has shared what was discussed in the lecture.

"This week, Dr Fancourt shared a fascinating lecture on the psychology behind why humans speak and sing. She began by demonstrating how music has been around for such a long time, by playing us the earliest recording of music in a community. The oldest found instrument was a 40,000-year-old flute made from bird bones, which was found by researchers. Dr Fancourt explained to us that this suggests that music has existed within human culture for a very long time. So, Dr Fancourt posed the question, “why has music been such an integral part of human culture for such a long time?” She explained that it is easy to see how the human species might have evolved to have language. It serves a clear function for communication with others and allows us to express our thoughts for survival benefits. But music is different, “music can’t convert thought into a direct action like language can”. However, “it does serve an important function in the communication of emotion”. For example, in the film industry, the use of music is critical as the mood of the music can drastically change the atmosphere of a scene.

In addition, she showed us how music can serve as a way to unite large groups of people from around the world, in for example, a large music concert. She also showed us how even very young infants are born with the ability to react to the sound of music in a different way to which they react to speech.

In her conclusion, Dr Fancourt explained that the earliest form of human communication would have been “vocal utterances before we could form words. We would have developed a repertoire of sounds to communicate with one another”. This combination of music and language would have been used to communicate something important. As a result, music is integral to what it means to be human. However, she also proposed the idea that music is not necessarily strictly related to humans. To demonstrate this, Dr Fancourt played us an entertaining video of a cockatoo which appears to dance along with music. Researchers have been interested in this bird because he appears to be spontaneously responding to music for enjoyment. His existence suggests that music serves an important function in both human culture and potentially the animal kingdom too. This concept of how music can be found in the animal kingdom is fascinating and I am excited to explore this topic further.

In my opinion, the highlight of the lecture was the engaging video of how different pieces of music can change the mood of the same scene in Captain Hook completely. It could change the scene from a sorrowful mood to a confident and adventurous mood by only changing the music. Overall, I found this lecture very interesting, as it was fascinating to explore a subject which I had not previously considered."