A Fauré Nocturne - new born chicks would like it....

I'm finding some of the Gabriel Fauré Noctures very pleasant. Here is Nocturne no. 3, op. 33. And, the abstract following the video is relevant to the debate over whether our preference of consonant music of this sort is rooted in acoustic properties important to the auditory system or is acquired through enculturation. Italian researchers find newly hatched domestic chicks show a spontaneous preference for a visual imprinting object associated with consonant sound intervals over an identical object associated with dissonant sound intervals. This suggests that preference for harmonic relationships between frequency components may be related to the prominence of harmonic spectra in biological sounds in natural environments.



Here is the abstract from Chiandetti and
Vallortigara1:

The question of whether preference for consonance is rooted in acoustic properties important to the auditory system or is acquired through enculturation has not yet been resolved. Two-month-old infants prefer consonant over dissonant intervals, but it is possible that this preference is rapidly acquired through exposure to music soon after birth or in utero. Controlled-rearing studies with animals can help shed light on this question because such studies allow researchers to distinguish between biological predispositions and learned preferences. In the research reported here, we found that newly hatched domestic chicks show a spontaneous preference for a visual imprinting object associated with consonant sound intervals over an identical object associated with dissonant sound intervals. We propose that preference for harmonic relationships between frequency components may be related to the prominence of harmonic spectra in biological sounds in natural environments.