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Evolutionary Musicology

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Biomusicology; Evolution of music; Music evolution

Definition

Evolutionary musicology is a subdiscipline of biomusicology, the study of music from a biological perspective, which embeds the psychological and physiological mechanisms of human music perception and production in the theory of biological evolution. Evolutionary musicology studies the origin and evolution of music in the human species, encompassing vocal communication and musical behaviors in non-human animal species; behavioral, cognitive, and neurological development of musical processing and skill; cross-cultural human universals in musical capacity and cognitive processing; and archeological evidence to develop hypotheses concerning the evolution of human musical appreciation and music-making.

Introduction

Music is a pervasive, universal, and foundational feature of human social life. Although humans appear to be more attuned to the creation and appreciation of this phenomenon than any other species, the social...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Western University, London, ON, Canada

    Nathan Oesch

  2. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nathan Oesch

Authors
  1. Nathan Oesch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nathan Oesch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychiatry, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, UP, India

    Deblina Roy

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Oesch, N. (2021). Evolutionary Musicology. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_2845

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