Music Before Humans: 2024 Wiegand Memorial Foundation Lecture

The Jackman Humanities Institute invites you to the 2024 Wiegand Memorial Foundation Lecture "Music Before Humans" and reception on Monday, February 26, 2024, with John Haines, Professor of Music and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.

Since its invention some two thousand years ago, the Greek “music” concept (mousike or μουσική) has regularly changed with the times. Before the Greeks, and even long after them, a variety of other concepts were used by humans to describe the sounds they made together. Music, then, is just one of many human concepts to describe something that is bigger and older, much older.

How did music, as we call it, originate? This presentation will explore the non-human origins of music by gradually moving back in time. We will begin hundreds of years ago and gradually pick up speed to reach millions of years ago. From the miraculous syrinx of our arboreal neighbors to the resonating crests of our amphibian cousins, the evidence for pre-human sound production and sound reception is overwhelming. This musical journey back in time is instructive, too, for it has something to teach us about why we humans consider music so special.