Conceptualising Musicality as a Complex Human Trait

In Chap. 1 it was argued that the co-occurrence of autism and exceptional musicality cannot be legitimately explored in a framework that conceptualises music as a ‘rule based’ or ‘closed’ system of structured sounds, and musicality as a restricted set of perceptual, cognitive and memory skills. In this chapter, current thinking about music and musicality will be explored in the context of a biomusicology framework that conceptualises musicality as a species-typical trait of humans that may be studied using similar methods to those used to explore complex behaviours in other species.