近日，美国宾州州立大学Luke Glowacki、哈佛大学Samuel A. Mehr、Manvir Singh等研究人员合作揭示了人类歌曲中的普遍性和多样性。这一研究成果于2019年11月22日发表在国际学术期刊《科学》上。

音乐有什么普遍性，有什么不同？研究人员从国际社会的代表性样本以及录音唱片中建立了关于音乐行为的民族志文本语料库。人种学的语料表明，音乐（包括带有单词的歌曲）出现在每个观察到的社会中。

音乐在三个维度（形式、唤醒、宗教）上变化，在社会内部比在整个社会中更多；音乐与某些行为环境有关，例如婴儿护理、康复、舞蹈和爱情。

通过机器总结、业余和专业听众评分以及人工改编进行分析，这些唱片揭示出歌曲的声学特征可以预测其主要的行为背景。

音调是广泛的，也许是普遍的；音乐的节奏和旋律复杂性各不相同；并且在世界范围内发现的旋律和节奏元素遵循幂律规则。

附：英文原文

Title: Universality and diversity in human song

Author: Samuel A. Mehr, Manvir Singh, Dean Knox, Daniel M. Ketter, Daniel Pickens-Jones, S. Atwood, Christopher Lucas, Nori Jacoby, Alena A. Egner, Erin J. Hopkins, Rhea M. Howard, Joshua K. Hartshorne, Mariela V. Jennings, Jan Simson, Constance M. Bainbridge, Steven Pinker, Timothy J. O’Donnell, Max M. Krasnow, Luke Glowacki

Issue&Volume: 2019/11/22

Abstract: What is universal about music, and what varies We built a corpus of ethnographic text on musical behavior from a representative sample of the world’s societies, as well as a discography of audio recordings. The ethnographic corpus reveals that music (including songs with words) appears in every society observed; that music varies along three dimensions (formality, arousal, religiosity), more within societies than across them; and that music is associated with certain behavioral contexts such as infant care, healing, dance, and love. The discography—analyzed through machine summaries, amateur and expert listener ratings, and manual transcriptions—reveals that acoustic features of songs predict their primary behavioral context; that tonality is widespread, perhaps universal; that music varies in rhythmic and melodic complexity; and that elements of melodies and rhythms found worldwide follow power laws.

DOI: 10.1126/science.aax0868

Source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6468/eaax0868