The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

suggesting that the sentic system might be one feature of musical pro-

cessing that has homologues in vertebrate expressive behavior generally.

The universality of this system for human emotional expression can be

demonstrated by pointing out that in speech,gesture,and music,the

same sentic profile occurs to express a given emotional intensity state,

regardless of the modality of expression.For example,happy music and

happy speech are both characterized by fast tempos,large-amplitude

sounds,and high registers;sad music and sad speech are characterized

by the opposite sentic spectrum.Looking at gesture instead of vocaliza-

tion,one sees that happy movements are characterized by fast tempos,

large amplitudes (broad gestures),and high positioning (the equivalent

of high register),with sad gesturing showing exactly the opposite spec-

trum.In all cases,the level of sentic modulation reflects the intensity level

of emotional expression,thus highlighting the gradient nature of the

sentic system.Happy movements are fast,but ecstatic movements are

ballistic;sad movements are slow,but depression is immobilizing.Again,

much evidence suggests that sentic modulation is not merely cross-

modal,but also cross-cultural and cross-species.Sentic factors are an

excellent place to look for universal expressive features in music,speech,

and gesture.

Four general mechanisms of expressive phrasing are used in speech

and music.As seen in figure 16.4,they are divided along two dimensions,

acting either at the local or global levels of the phrase,and acting in

either a graded or categorical fashion with respect to the acoustic para-

meters being modulated.

Global Level

We can think about two phrasing mechanisms acting at the global level

(figure 16.4,left side):global sentic modulation and contour-meaning

associations.Global sentic modulation involves expressive devices that

affect the intensity level of the whole phrase with regard to overall

tempo,amplitude,and register.These effects occur along a continuous

spectrum such that the level of sentic modulation correlates with the

intensity of emotional expression.As mentioned,global sentic effects

have the same emotional meaning in music and speech,and the sentic

profile for a particular emotional state in music and speech is exactly the

same.

The second factor of global expressive phrasing involves all categori-

cal contour-meaning associations that relate phrase melody to particu-

lar meanings. Unlike global sentic modulation, contour-meaning

associations work in categorical fashion,with each melody having a more

or less specific meaning (see Richman,this volume).Things such as ques-

tion intonations,surprise intonations,and call intonations are universal

288 Steven Brown