The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

concentrate on one ingredient of the creative aspect of music,essential

for composers,performers,and other makers of music,and for those who

delight in listening to music performed by others:the ability to create

acoustic novelty.

I will begin by considering sounds of two higher primates.Both chim-

panzees and gibbons are close relatives of humans,and vocalizations of

both are considered as protomusical (Wallin 1991).I will make no effort

to review their entire repertoires,which are well documented (Goodall

1986;Mitani 1994;Marler and Tenaza 1977;Geissmann 1993).Instead I

will focus on those sounds that most obviously qualify as songs.Figure

3.5 illustrates a typical example of the chimpanzee vocalization called

pant-hooting,recorded from an adult male in Africa.This is a loud,rhyth-

mical hooting,typically about ten seconds in duration,beginning softly

and working up to an almost screamlike climax (Goodall 1986;Marler

and Hobbett 1975).As recorded from different individuals and from the

same individual in different circumstances,variation is substantial,but

typically consists of four parts:introduction,build-up,climax,and let-

down.One pant-hoot includes anything from fifteen to thirty distinct

sounds,characterized as hoots,screams,and whimpers,some on pro-

duced on inhalation,some on exhalation.

Pant-hooting is the longest and most complex of all chimpanzee vocal-

izations.Rather like birdsong,it is used as an affective,nonsymbolic

display in many different situations,especially during intergroup encoun-

ters,when excited,after prey capture,to assert dominance,and,often in

chorus,to keep in touch in the forest (Goodall 1986).The key point here

is that,despite variations,each individual chimp always pant-hoots in

42 Peter Marler

Figure 3.5

A sound spectrogram of a single pant-hooting sequence of an adult male chimpanzee

recorded at the Gombe National Park,Tanzania.Sound is produced on both inhalation

and exhalation.The bottom trace shows the amplitude envelope.

Fig.3.5

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