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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