Music as Biology: The Tones We Like and Why

The universality of musical tones has long fascinated philosophers, scientists, musicians and ordinary listeners. Purves draws on evidence that the intervals defining Western and other scales are those with the greatest collective similarity to the human voice; that major and minor scales are heard as happy or sad because they mimic the subdued and excited speech of these emotional states; and that the character of a culture’s speech influences the tonal palette of its traditional music.