The concept of music evolution in Herbert Spencer’s and Charles Darwin’s theories

Abstract

This paper deals with the discourses on music in Herbert Spencer’s and Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Even though both Spencer and Darwin construed music as a carrier of the expression of affects and a part of a ubiquitous evolutional process towards ever increasing progress of culture, these authors’ discourses differed from each other in the understanding of the origin and function of music. Darwin considered music as being one of the (natural) means of making a selection during the process of evolution of the humans as a biological species. Notwithstanding certain similarities to Darwin, Spencer (as well as his followers) discussed music as a part of a socio-cultural evolution, which entailed an approach to music as a historical and cultural phenomenon. I will here elaborate the position of the discourses on music in Spencer’s and Darwin’s general theories of evolution, point out to the relevant aspects of the concept of music evolution and mention the influence that these theories had on the 19th-century official discourses on music.

Keywords

• Charles Darwin
• discourses on music
• evolutionism
• music evolution
• Herbert Spencer
• the origin of music