The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

variations grouped around that pattern.The accomplishments of a winter

wren are of an altogether different magnitude.Each male has a reper-

toire of maybe ten song types and the winter wren is only a beginner as

wrens go;other wren species have repertoires numbered in the hundreds

(Kroodsma and Verner 1978).So this is the first bird-ape contrast.Some

songbirds with learned songs have individual repertoires that are huge;

repertoires of monkeys and apes are strictly limited.

If we examine the way in which large birdsong repertoires develop,we

find an ontogenetic principle operating that is either feeble or simply

lacking in nonhuman primates.Vocalizations of monkeys and apes are

innate.Songbirds,with their learned songs,have a developmental strat-

egy with all the hallmarks of a truly creative process.As far as I know,

phonocoding with this degree of richness has never been recorded in any

animal with innate vocalizations.In a classic manifestation of phonolog-

ical syntax,wrens and other songbirds display a remarkable ability to

rearrange learned phrases,seemingly doing so almost endlessly in some

species.Many different sequences are created,generating,in effect,a

kind of animal music.The sequences are not random but orderly,orga-

nized by definable rules and structured in such a way as to yield many

stable,repeatable,distinctive patterns,the precise number varying from

species to species and bird to bird.Together with whale songs,also

learned (Payne,Tyack,and Payne 1983;Payne,this volume),these bird-

songs are an obvious place to look for insights into what underlying aes-

thetic principles,if any,are shared between animal and human music.

I draw two modest conclusions from this overview of animal commu-

nication,language and music.From a reductionistic point of view,a

convenient basis for animal-human comparisons is provided by the

realization that the potential for phonocoding is a critical requisite for

the emergence not only of speech and language but also of music.I

suggest that we can already see a version of such a process in operation,

albeit in primordial form,in some learned songs of animals,especially

songbirds.An obvious next step would be to analyze phonocoding rules

that birds use when they sing.Is it possible that they conform to our own

compositional rules? A minimalist definition of music,at least of the

Western,tonal variety,might be couched in terms of notes with specific

pitches,intervals,and distinctive timbres combined into phrases that are

repeated with additions and deletions,assembled into series with a par-

ticular meter and rhythm,and so constituting a song or melody.One

approach to the human-animal comparison would be to see whether any

animal sounds conform to similar taxonomic criteria,all of which are

potentially studiable in animals.Do the rules vary among species in rela-

tion to repertoire size? Are correlations seen among lifestyle,tempera-

ment,and song tempo in different bird species? It is my conviction that

45 Origins of Music and Speech

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