the cadences of all the various Englishes are different also. I wonder
if Patel means English English, which as chalk to cheese compared to,
say, Welsh English etc. It's PC to say British English but as we all
know, Britain doesn't really exist.
Roger
On Dec 31, 2007 10:09 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From a footnote [p.242]in Oliver Sacks's new book, Musicophilia...
>
> 'What makes the music of Sir Edward Elgar sound so distinctively English?'
> they [Iversen, Patel and Ohgushi of the Neurosciences Institute] ask. 'What
> makes the music of Debussy sound so French?'
>
> Patel et al. compared rhythm and melody in British English speech and music
> to that of French speech and music, using the music of a dozen different
> composers. They found, by plotting rhythm and melody together, that 'a
> striking pattern emerges, suggesting that a nation's language exerts a
> "gravitational pull" on the structure of its music.'
>
> The Czech composer Leos Janacek, too, was greatly exercised by the
> resemblances between speech and music, and he spent more than thirty years
> sitting in cafes and other public places, notating the melodies and rhythms
> of people's speech, convinced that these unconsciously mirrored their
> emotional intent and states of mind. He attempted to incorporate these
> speech rhythms into his own music - or, rather, to find 'equivalents' for
> them in the classical music grid of pitches and intervals. Many people,
> whether or not they speak Czech, have felt that there is an uncanny
> correspondence between Janacek's music and the sound patterns of Czech
> speech.
>
> Sacks's bibliography is packed with research journal items, but I note this:
>
> Patel, Aniruddh D. 2008. Music, Language and the Brain. New York: Oxford
> University Press.
>
> In other words, forthcoming...
>
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