About this item
A music researcher's quest to discover other musical species.Even those of us who can't play a musical instrument or lack a sense of rhythm can perceive and enjoy music. Research shows that all humans possess the trait of musicality. We are a musical species -- but are we the only musical species? Is our musical predisposition unique, like our linguistic ability? In The Evolving Animal Orchestra, Henkjan Honing embarks upon a quest to discover if humans share the trait of musicality with other animals.Charles Darwin believed that musicality was a capacity of all animals, human and nonhuman, with a clear biological basis. Taking this as his starting point, Honing -- a music cognition researcher -- visits a series of biological research centers to observe the ways that animals respond to music.
About the Author
Dr. Henkjan Honing is professor of Music Cognition at both the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) . He conducts his research under the auspices of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) and the University of Amsterdam's Brain and Cognition (ABC) center. He is known as a passionate researcher in this new interdisciplinary field that gives us fundamental insights in the cognitive mechanisms underlying musicality.Honing authored over 200 scientific publications in the areas of music cognition, musicality and music technology, and published several books for a general audience, including Iedereen is muzikaal. Wat we weten over het luisteren naar muziek (Nieuw Amsterdam, 2009/2012) , published in English as Musical Cognition: A Science of Listening (Routledge, 2011/2013) , and Aap slaat maat. Op zoek naar de oorsprong van muzikaliteit bij mens en dier (Nieuw Amsterdam, 2018) that appeared in English as The Evolving Animal Orchestra: In Search of What Makes Us Musical (2019, The MIT Press) . In 2018 a research agenda on the topic of musicality appeared as The Origins of Musicality (2018, The MIT Press) .For an elaborate biography see http://www.mcg.uva.nl/hh/
