Ontelly

Sunday Feature - In the Beginning Was the Song

Logo for Sunday Feature - In the Beginning Was the Song

Ivan Hewett explores the origins and evolution of music. The urge to make music is rooted deep in human nature, but why that urge arose in the first place is a hotly debated question that divides the scientific community. Ivan Hewett goes in search of the answer, drawing on a fascinating body of evidence that ranges from Palaeolithic cave settlements and observations of apes making music, to laboratory studies of infants' musical abilities, and a new brain-scanning experiment to map the neural basis of the music faculty.