Paper short abstract:

The human musical brain is shaped by the action of surrounding sounds, generating aural profiles and aesthetic patterns in complex reflective processes. The ability to unconsciously interiorize auditory signals is the result of an adaptative evolutionary mechanism, and derives into a sonic affinity.

Paper long abstract:

Further research is needed in the interdisciplinary field of study of certain soundscapes assumed to be generative and influential contexts where human aural cultures are shaped and developed. In particular there is a dearth of works centered on the psycho-physiological interaction between those soundscapes and the resultant musical phenomenon.

Whether geophysical, biological or anthropogenetic, all regular sound spectrums entail an embodied cognition for human beings, which we think is probably due to a perceptual principle based on the concept of auditory mimetism. The mechanism, in turn, would correspond both to a defensive and offensive function within the logic of evolution and survival.

To explain this interesting topic we propose the sonic affinity hypothesis, which holds that the human musical brain is decisively conditioned by the constant and dialectical conjunction of immediate surrounding sounds received from the earliest formation of the ear and continuing throughout the individual's lifetime, generating correlated sonic profiles and aesthetic patterns in complex reflective processes. The ability to perceive and unconsciously interiorize so many auditory signals -like an all-pervasive and empathetic sound-matrix- very probably starts in the prenatal phase of childhood.

In this paper we start by considering several pieces of evidence that prove a close interconnectedness between certain authors, musical styles and instruments, and the aural environments which would have influenced their production. This is the case of some pitch, timbre and temperamental features peculiar to Mozart, Beethoven or Rossini, as well as to minimalism, heavy metal, techno, rap, and also several preindustrial musical cultures.