Sorry for my initial flippant reply.
Something to add: Tertiary effects need to be considered. For example, composers and songwriters of yesteryear wrote minor-key music with a “dark” or “sad” affect. And we’ve been listening to that music for years.
This doesn’t disprove the theory of minor keys as inherently sad, but it does suggest that human listeners have had some conditioning.
Sure, “clear” was an exaggeration, and I don’t want to get into a scientific debate because I’m neither a scientist nor someone who enjoys a debate. But just for the record, there are more papers on this than just that one I linked to (e.g. Bowling). And, to your point, the data isn’t clear, there are lots of theories floating around.
I’m just curious about whether this thing is universal, or whether it’s due to culture, because if it isn’t due to culture, then in theory, we may not be the only species that have these emotional associations, which I find to be a fascinating possibility.
Even a skeptic like Philip Ball seems to agree on some baseline statements, e.g.
So although it’s simplistic to suppose that all music is happy or sad, these crude universal indicators of emotion do seem to work across cultural boundaries.
Neuroscientist Daniel Bowling and colleagues at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, compared the sound spectra — the profiles of different acoustic frequencies – of speech with those in Western classical music and Finnish folk songs. They found that the spectra in major-key music are close to those in excited speech, while the spectra of minor-key music are more similar to subdued speech1.
This made me reflect on my own experiences with cats, having been a cat owner for at least 30 years of my life. Cats have a tendency to end their meow in an upward pitch in the end when they’re happy, and the other direction when they’re sad or anxious. This at least seems to be a global phenomena because I’m recognizing the same cat speech all around youtube. That’s not music, of course, but it’s harmony and dissonance.
Anyway, I think this is a fascinating topic, but I don’t have the answers, hence this original post.
I didn’t interpret it as flippant at all, you were merely raising the crucial question: is this cultural or is this genetic. My question about whether animals have similar emotional attachment to harmony is only relevant if it’s the latter. It seems the jury is out on that one, despite studies from Bowling etc.
“ Single word utterances were recorded from ten native speakers of American English five females ranging in age from 18–68 and without significant speech or hearing pathol- ogy. ”.
Again, the study is not cross cultural, no tonal languages were considered. Their source for cross cultural major and minor musical concepts is from 1948. My cats get zippy to dub techno.
But yes, let’s not argue with strangers on the internet.
I don’t intend to be a stranger, but yes, we can agree that the science isn’t clear and that we don’t know if it’s cultural or not.
Cats may not know major / minor, but they do get call and response:
Great question, and more complicated than it may first appear. I can be at my happiest when listening to very “sad” music. I feel happier when listening to Joy Division, for instance, than Abba or Hall & Oates. But at the same time I do generally feel minor keys as sad and major keys as happy. I doubt that most animals can have such a nuanced response.
IDK about major/minor, but i know stoned cats certainly enjoy music a lot.
In Habib Hassan Touma’s book, Music of the Arabs, I remember a part where the author remarks (paraphrasing) “the soul of the music is between the notes”. This always resonated with me, so I hear you there. Though I’d add that in truly modal music (music of the venerable heterophonic modal traditions, i.e Turkish, Arabic, Azeri, Persian, Hindustani, Carnatic, etc) microtonalism is used very differently than trying to combine it with Western harmony.
Regarding animals’ perception of minor/sad, major/happy, I would be reluctant to project culture-conditioned human aural perception onto animals. Someone in this thread mentioned that crows don’t “sing”. That they only “call”. That’s a good example of projecting human (encultured) perception on non human beings. Perhaps some species are music enthusiasts, others not so much…
If you look at Dr Emoto’s work on the effect of music on water, Also how the health of plants can be effected by the music played to the plant. (Not by hearing the music but it being perceived by the water in the plant) then all any animal would need is water in its body for it to be effected by major and minor scale. I think humans are something like 70% water or something…
If the animal had a skeletal system that would help feel the rhythm vibrate its bones but that’s outside the question asked by the op.
I knew a cat that always stayed right in front of the speakers when Fishbone was on.
More data, on cats singing.
The aforementioned Gadget, has various vocalizations – various meows, and trills, and “bloops”, short ( sometimes very short ) talky vocalizations, done in my presence to communicate. These are typically in groups of two and sometimes three. “Bloop, bloop”. Feed me. But the two bloops are clearly a major third ascending.
Sometimes there are three, root root, third.
But i just noticed a less common one, an “Oh, i’m afraid.”. ( I was carrying a big scary snake extension cord. ) Same two bloops same interval, but this time descending. Musically a minor sixth.
Does this mean anything – or is this just overthinking ?
TLDR;
I’d first wonder if every human being already consider minor or major as “sad” or “happy”.
It also depends of which major or minor we are speaking about, harmonic or modal music.
It’s also worth noting that all humans are not using tempered music or even simply the 12 notes system. That’s mainly cultural I think.
Then, which animals are we speaking about?
Seems like some studies show that chimps and tamarins don’t prefer major scales.
Cats and dogs seem to be more reactive to intensity of rhythm and human voice than on melodies.
All this to come to my point: is there any music in minor that feels happy? Or opposite?
I remember attending a reunion of fado in Lisboa where major was used but the overall feeling was really melancolic. Blues comes also to mind in that sense.
