Bill Walsh writes:

>This is a most interesting thread and fits in with a very recent
>scientific report by some behavioral psychologist dealing with learning
>music by rhesus monkeys.  These monkeys were taught to press a button for
>food when they heard a song that they had been taught.  They performed
>perfectly with simple children's tunes.  They did just as well with other
>simple tunes that the experimenters composed, but only with tunes that had
>a "well defined tonal center." Obviously atonal (but equally simple) tunes
>were total failures.  The authors were loathe to speculate much on the
>meaning of these results and noted that there was no scientific, objective
>way to measure a degree of atonality.  Is this really true? Any thoughts
>on the philosphical implications for our struggles with atonality in
>classical music?

Not at this point, since nobody knows, scientifically, what the mind is,
let alone what happens when it reacts to art.  One could speculate about
reasons in the absence of evidence - something these scientists were quite
rightly loathe to do.  The speculations would probably just confirm the
prejudices of the speculator.  There really is no solid evidence.  Monkeys
don't react to atonal music as a conditioning stimulant is the only thing
you can conclude.  Presumably humans don't need music to stimulate them
into pressing a key for food.

Also, Bill implies that everybody struggles with atonality.  This is simply
not true, which implies that the tonal/atonal distinctions being made about
music are probably not as important as other distinctions.  Consider four
very dissonant pieces: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Strauss's Elektra,
Webern's 5 Pieces for Orchestra, and Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden.  Three
of these pieces are, strictly speaking, tonal.  Two of them are classical
"hits." However, I doubt that someone coming across these works for the
first time would put them into the "proper bins."

Steve Schwartz