James Joyce’s ‘Linguistic Musicality’

Musicality: Instinct or Acquired Skill?

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain-specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved ...

On Music Cognition, Musicality and Methodology

NIME, Musicality and Practice-led Methods

To engage with questions of musicality is to invite into consideration a complex network of topics beyond the mechanics of soundful interaction with our interfaces. Drawing on the work of Born, I sketch an outline of the reach of these topics. I suggest that practice-led methods, by dint of focussing on the lived experience where many of these topics converge, may be able to serve as a useful m...

Cross-cultural perspectives on music and musicality.

Musical behaviours are universal across human populations and, at the same time, highly diverse in their structures, roles and cultural interpretations. Although laboratory studies of isolated listeners and music-makers have yielded important insights into sensorimotor and cognitive skills and their neural underpinnings, they have revealed little about the broader significance of music for indi...

James

a chair, he was the very picture of dejection. His small head was hanging, an obstreperous tuft of the coarse, sandy hair standing defiantly upright on the crown of it; his complexion was sallow and pasty, and not in any way enhanced by a sparse scattering of tiny yellow freckles, plainly visible at close view; his generous mouth drooped, like his head, the lips pale, but firmly closed. In his ...