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This chapter examines the human problem of grappling with the unexpected while sustaining the familiar, a core feature that underlies human experience and inquiry in general, but which is also essential, in part, to musical sensibility. One neurochemical that is often linked to expectations and the organization of behavior, including that of music, is dopamine. The chapter explains how musical expectations permeate diverse forms of problem solving, such as coping with “the shocks and instabilities, the conflicts and resolution” that we experience every day. It also discusses music and musical expectations in relation to aesthetics and aesthetic judgment, learning, probabilities, discrepancy, uncertainty, change, brain activation, statistical inference, abduction, emotions, and numbers. Finally, it explores the concept of musical meaning, musical order, and musical syntax.

This chapter examines the issue of musical sensibility as an instinct as well as the cognitive and neural capabilities that underlie musical expression, including diverse forms of memory. In particular, it considers working memory as an evolutionary trend that expanded our problem solving and social expression. The chapter first provides an overview of the link between musical sensibility and social instincts from an evolutionary perspective before discussing how music is inherently tied to movement and time, along with cognitive events, adaptation, sensory experiences, and emotional sensations. It also describes musical cognition and cognitive motor planning memory as inherent features of musical sensibility, and how musical experience affects the brain.

This book traces the origins of music, from the appearance of the relevant anatomical features, to the development of diverse forms of biological systems that figure in musical expression. It considers how music reflects our social nature and is tied to other instrumental expression in the adaptation to changing circumstances. It shows that expectancy and violations of those musical expectations linked to memory and human development are critical features in the aesthetics of musical sensibility (like other avenues of human experience). The book also examines how music is connected to movement and dance. This introduction provides an overview of the “cognitive revolution” and the emergence of a discipline called “social neuroscience,” as well as Leonard Meyer's theory of music drawn from a pragmatism based in C. S. Peirce and John Dewey's notion of inquiry. It also explains how action and embodied cognition are related to music.

This chapter examines normal neonatal orientation to sounds as well as developmental disorders that affect musical sensibility, including Williams syndrome, a form of hypersocial expression coupled with a liking for music. It first explains how a sense of music begins very early in infancy, noting that the discrimination of pitch and other perceptual capabilities are expressed within the first year of life, events believed to be fundamentally linked to social capabilities. It is the social world, gaining a foothold in the life of others, which makes this knowledge essential. Rhythmic engagement also begins in infancy, generating movement. This musical expression is linked to affective needs and diverse forms of social contact. The chapter proceeds by discussing hypersocial and hyposocial behaviors among individuals with Williams syndrome, along with the evolution of social behavior that underlies musical expression. Finally, it considers epigenetic events and lifelong learning changes in relation to music.

This conclusion considers the effects of music on well-being. Music evolved in the context of social contact and meaning. Music allows us to reach out to others and expand our human experience toward and with others. This process began with song and was expanded through instruments and dance. Music serves, among other things, to facilitate social cooperative and coordinated behaviors—the induction of “social harmonies.” Musical sensibility is a panoply of emotions that are inextricably linked to our cognitive, motor, and premotor resources and are expressed in everything we do, most especially in music. This conclusion also explains how music and language enhance each other with regard to cephalic function and behavioral adaptation, noting that both are essentially rooted in social contact.

This chapter begins with a distinction between ‘fictional songs’ and ‘real songs’, then proceeds to a discussion of the settings of Mignon’s songs, first by Goethe’s composers (Reichardt, Zelter), then by the composers who produced Wilhelm Meister song-cycles (Schumann, Anton Rubinstein, Wolf). Songs in novels by Balzac, George Eliot, and Angela Carter are considered as complex instances of the fictional song; ‘phenomenal’ and ‘noumenal’ song in Thomas’s Mignon and other operas are discussed, together with the themes of aphasia and musical expressivity; this leads to a reconsideration of the relations between lyric, song, and narrative. The chapter concludes with a review of the timelines of the musical theme as embodied in Mignon, and especially of the notion of musical sensibility.

Alan Hall, a London-based freelancer who makes features for the BBC, is a trained composer who brings a consciously musical sensibility to his radio features. For him, the grince of a flicked cigarette lighter, used repeatedly in an audio portrait of a former Iraq War soldier, can serve as a powerful, musical pulse, freighted with meaning. Some of those meanings can be articulated, some only felt. Alan wants to use sound to “drill bore holes into the deeper recesses of consciousness.”