Musical Language “sometimes behaves so strangely”

I chose the Radiolab episode titled “Musical Language”. I’ve been a musician since I was ten years old and find the science and human interaction with music to be a fascinating topic. In this episode, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich speak about the ways that humans perceive sound and how sound can become a “feeling” instead of just something the listener hears. The guests included Diana Duetsch – a Professor of Music Psychology at Univerity of San Diego and Jonah Lehrer – a frequent Radiolab contributor . During Diana Duetsch’s segment, she spoke of how humans perceive sound. In one of the studies she was conducting, she would put parts of her speech onto a loop. She left the room while an audio clip of the words “sometimes behaves so strangely” was left playing on the loop. After a while, she began to hear sounds as if music was playing. When returning to the room, she found that she’d left this clip playing on the loop and somehow the words began to sound as if there was a melody behind them. Subsequently, when she would listen to the piece again, those words in that phrase again sounded like she was spontaneously bursting into song in the middle of a sentence. Her brain had altered the way it perceived the words “sometimes behaves so strangely.” Lehrer spoke of an unfortunate incident that occurred at an Igor Stravinsky concert in 1913. Stravinsky was an “up-and-coming” composer and created the musical piece “Rite of Spring”. When hearing the word “spring,” one might think of flowers growing, bright sunshine, or a bright and sunny atmosphere. Stravinsky’s music started out light and flowy with a bassoon solo, but slowing the music became more dissonant and unsettling. Eventually, there is a fast-pulsing chord that courses through the entire rest of the piece. It is believed that this