Radiolab
Sound As Touch
Anne Fernald explains our need to goochie-goochie-goo at every baby we meet, and absolves us of our guilt. This kind of talk, dubbed motherese, is an instict that crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries. Caecilius was goochie-goochie-gooing in Rome; Grunt was goochie-gooing in the caves. Radio Lab did our own study of infant-directed speech, recording more than a dozen different parents. The melodies of these recordings illustrate Fernald's findings that there are a set of common tunes living within the words that parents all over the world intone to their babies.
Then, science reporter Jonah Lehrer takes us on a tour through the ear as we try to understand how the brain makes sense of soundwaves and what happens when it can't. Which brings us to one particularly riotous example: the 1913 debut performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." Jonah suggests that the brain's attempt to tackle disonant sounds resulted in old ladies tackling each other. Disney might even show up for the brawl.
Anne Fernald's Center For Infant Studies at Stanford
Time Magazine profile on Stravinsky, by Philip Glass
More on the "Rite of Spring" riot
Articles by Jonah Lehrer for Seed Magazine
In the segment on the "Rite of Spring," Jonah Lehrer incorrectly cites the mushroom segment of Fantasia as being the one that used Stravinsky's piece.
"Rite of Spring" is actually used in the not-very-adorable dinosaur segment, which features a lot of random violence and chaos. It's actually a very unusual segment, because predatory creatures in Disney films are usually villains, and destructive acts of nature are usually the result of an evil sorcerer. Rarely does Disney depict all this chaos honestly, as things that simply happen in nature.
In this way, the use of the "Rite of Spring" in Fantasia arguably "un-Disneys" the film, making it truer to the purpose of the original piece. It's also arguable that this segment holds considerably less interest for children than the dancing mushrooms, with the exception of children that are very keen on dinosaurs.
Posted by: T Nixon October 01, 2007 - 12:35AM
My comment about the linking of the Rite of Spring riot in 1913 to brain activity is that it was possibly not all a music-induced freakout: I've heard that Marcel Duchamp & artists of the Ashcan School either caused riots, or nearly caused riots, by exhibiting their painted works. at around the same time period (1908-1913). Maybe, it was a general "shock of the new" thing, rather than dissonance, specifically.
Windows 
Windows 
Windows 
Search current and archival WNYC broadcasts. More
Email us at radiolab@wnyc.org
- The Brian Lehrer Show: Buy, Buy Baby (July 07, 2008)
- The Leonard Lopate Show: Underreported: Nurse-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care (July 03, 2008)
- The Leonard Lopate Show: The Lyme Disease Epidemic (July 01, 2008)
- The Brian Lehrer Show: Before There was Stephen Colbert, There was George Carlin (July 02, 2008)
- The Leonard Lopate Show: Would You Survive? (July 02, 2008)