Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

ESSENTIAL PREMISES

The mechanism of heredity lies in a single germ cell carrying the character-determining chromosomes which consist of organized chains of genes. In the character and organization of these genes in the fertilized cell we find the complete "blueprint" for the future individual in so far as it is to be determined by heredity. In the twenty-four pairs of chromosomes in the fertilized human germ cell we find the long and diversified heritage of each parent represented through the union of the sperm and the ovum. The selection and the organization of the genes in these chromosomes adequately represent what the future individual can be.

This genetic constitution is modified by the cytoplasm, the supporting part of the cell which is its first environment, and further by the entire embryonic environment. Any changes that take place after the launching of this cell, whether before or after birth, are regarded as environmental. In the embryonic life, this germinating cell develops by processes of cell division and specialization into the complete human organism ready to function more or less immediately after birth. This heritage has fabulous resources in the form of possible facilities for future development. As nature was prolific in the storing and transmission of countless hereditary characters in the genetic constitution, so the equipment of the child at birth is astonishingly prolific in the provision it makes for diversified development of the individual. Development from this stage on must, therefore, of necessity take place through a process of selection and specialization in which certain characters are given right of way and many are subordinated or inhibited by conflicting interests, but the great mass remain relatively latent or dormant. We may assume that superior musical talent is determined in large part by superior musical heredity, and that inferior musical talent or lack of talent may be determined in large part by a correspondingly defective heredity.

The science of heredity in the strictest sense focuses upon the study of the identification and organization of the genes in relation to the determination of characters which shall appear in the genetic constitution and determine future structures and functions of the individual. When the geneticist deals with specific anatomical structures, this relationship is traceable with comparative ease; but when he comes to deal with more or less complicated physiological or mental functions, the tracing of this relationship becomes rather baffling on account of the complexity of the final product.

Turning then to the issues involved in the interpretation of musical inheritance, we must face certain theoretical assumptions. One of them is that a scientific study of musical heredity cannot be pursued on the assumption that mind and body are two distinct entities, each inherited independently. Nor can we hold the old doctrine of psychophysical parallelism. All human genetics proceeds on the assumption that the human individual is one psychophysical organism. Our musical experience, observation and measurement will therefore represent views from the mental side; our organic studies may be views of the same things from the physical side.

Furthermore, musicality is not one specific human trait but an infinite hierarchy of traits running through the entire gamut of the psychophysical musical organism. To make any progress whatever, the scientist must make the supreme sacrifice of attempting to deal only with specific isolable factors apparently small and remote in themselves. The situation is analogous to that of purely physical features. It is generally admitted that the structure of the physical organism is heritable. But when we show that the color of the eyes of the fruit fly is heritable and that this inheritance takes place in a very complicated way, as has been adequately shown, we have simply identified parts of the structure and function of the genes in one specific feature in the vastly complex physical organism, however fundamental and characteristic this particular feature may be. This analogy applies in principle to the genetic study of the musical life. The crux of the difficulty lies in the identification of heritable factors.

Again we must remember that the musical mind is first of all a normal mind, a normal psychophysical organism ready to begin to function immediately after birth. What we shall look for then in a psychophysical organism is the presence of certain resources especially favorable or especially unfavorable to the normal functioning of the musical mind. We may assume that an average capacity present in the genetic constitution may be adequate for musical purposes but that exceptionally gifted persons require these traits in a correspondingly exceptional degree and that exceptionally unmusical individuals lack essential elements. The most wonderful thing is that a person can come into the world with a musical constitution at all, but the problem of heredity centers around individual differences, and these are more easily approachable than the total function. As in genetic studies of the inheritance of color blindness it has been possible to identify types, so in musical hearing we may look forward to the identification of types of defect and types of superiority deviating markedly from the normal.

Common observation and reasoning convince us without question that musicality is inherited in some mysterious way and this follows also from general considerations of current theories of biological inheritance. But when it comes to the scientific determination of laws of such inheritance, we face high barriers. Biological laws of inheritance must be established in terms of the genes; a specific biological structure or function must be related to gene organization. Let us call this measurement of the first order. Such measurements are most readily applied to anatomical structure and physiological function in the neuro-muscular organism. This is notably clear in the anatomy and physiology of the ear and its connections. It is equally applicable to the anatomy and physiology of the vocal organs—the bellows, the vibrators and the resonators for voice. It is conceivable, for example, that the length, the mass, the mode of attachment, and the general position and shape of the vocal cords and the mounting of the voice box are heritable characters traceable to genes and referable to musicality as the physical organs for voice.

We can also find relationships to the endocrines, which are in large part the determinants of musical emotionality. Electro-physiology is now giving great promise for the identification of functions in the ear and the brain and its central connections and is establishing interrelationships. Many of the laws of heredity established by measurements of this order probably refer to fundamental biological principles of inheritance in the psychophysical organism as a whole. By a physiological analysis of the sensory, motor, and central factors which operate most significantly in music, the systematist can set up a respectable body of biological facts in regard to musical inheritance which are antecedently probable in terms of the functions of genes and result in the structure and function of the musical organism.

Since the medium of music is sound, we shall look first for an exceptionally responsive or unresponsive ear, including not only the physical ear but the central organs in the nervous system through which it functions. This is basic for two reasons: First, because it determines what stimulation from the world of sound shall enter into the experience of the musical individual to a high degree; and second, because the purely physiological receptivity or organic response to sound acts upon and modifies the state of well-being or ill-being according as the auditory impression is beneficent or noxious in so far as its acts upon our circulation, metabolism, temperature and other organic processes. Such well-being or ill-being is, of course, in part the foundation for the feeling of musical pleasures and pains.

If we would gain a true and comprehensive insight into the nature and extent of role of environment in musical life, we must start with some established facts or reasonable assumptions of what is "given" for environment to act upon. The heritage is the capital fund which the environment invests or squanders. Only by knowing the hereditary contributions can we appraise the environmental contributions. In the study of the fruit fly, for example, the revelations of factors which must be regarded as environmental are quite as significant and essential as the revelations about the original organization of genes. The determination of the limits of heredity is the best means for revealing the functions and possibilities of environment. The music geneticist will therefore learn fully as much about environmental influences as he will about hereditary influences in studying heredity.