Spectral Percepts: Cognition, Biology and the Origins of Musicality

The proposed workshop aims to clarify the role of spectral percepts—including pitch, timbre, and consonance—in the evolution of musicality. Building on insights from neurobiology, psychology, (ethno)musicology, and evolutionary biology, it seeks to characterize these percepts and explore their variation across species and cultures. Taking a broadly Tinbergian perspective, the workshop will integrate questions of mechanism, ontogeny, phylogeny, function (Tinbergen, 1963), and cultural evolution (Fitch, 2018)—to include topics such as scale systems and tonality. A secondary emphasis will be placed on pleasure (reward and enjoyment), both as a potential driver of musical evolution and its role in the neural underpinnings of melody and harmony perception.

This intensive, small-scale workshop will consider empirical and theoretical work from leading researchers, such as Zatorre, Trainor, Patel, McDermott, and others (McDermott et al., 2016; Patel, 2017; Trainor & Unrau, 2012; Zatorre, 2024). Unlike prior meetings on musicality— including those held at the Lorentz Center (Greenfield et al., 2021; Honing et al., 2015)—this workshop deliberately shifts focus away from rhythm and production, toward the perceptual and affective dimensions of melody, harmony and timbre. Complementing recent advances in rhythmic cognition, it revisits Darwin’s assumption that animals not only perceive melodies but also take pleasure in them.

The workshop aims to realize the following goals:

• Foster new interdisciplinary research on how timbre, pitch, and reward/pleasure mechanisms might have shaped the evolution of musicality.

• Pinpoint and prioritize outstanding controversies that merit deeper investigation, paving the way for a dedicated special issue currently being discussed with Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

• Draft a collaborative research agenda—grounded in cross-species and cross-cultural research—that, following Tinbergen (1963; cf. Fitch, 2018), integrates work on the mechanism, ontogeny, phylogeny, function and cultural evolution of musicality

• Identify additional initiatives and publication opportunities that advance the broader research agenda on the Origins of Musicality.