MUS 312 Musical Universals
Musical “universals” are musical abilities and perceptions that function similarly in all humans regardless of an individual’s cultural background or experience. This course focuses on the attempts of neuroscientists, biologists, experimental psychologists and musicologists to identify musical universals. Using simple experiential activities to appreciate aspects of music of interest to scientists, we will survey the hypotheses, methodologies and findings of approximately a dozen key researchers in music perception, music cognition, and evolutionary musicology. Over the semester, we also will seek to evaluate and critique our own and others’ aesthetic judgments about music in light of factors and dynamics revealed by scientific research.