Good music, for example, comes from good musicians, and a high musical ability is thought to be closely related with sexual selection
Castrati: “In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art.”
Pretty much everything we rejoice in about ourselves, Is closely tied one way or another with reproductive fitness.
Plus all the numerous male and female religious priesthoods in numerous religions (from Christianity to Buddhism) that take vows of sexual abstinence, and were nonetheless honored for such.
Castrati: “In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art.”
I don’t think this in any way undercuts your point, but it is very interesting that the most successful castrati were in fact insanely popular sex symbols during the height of their popularity. They had love affairs and were not infrequently implicated in scandal of one kind or another, although I don’t think they ever got married. Farinelli, the greatest of the great, had rockstar popularity for decades in the 18th century, which came along with sexual status to match. As you might expect, all this business has been written about pretty extensively by historical musicologists in the age of gender studies.
As I’ve said elsewhere, our enjoyment of music seems to be wrapped up in multiple (at times competing) cognitive faculties, and is clearly not reducible to mere sexual/status display, although that is surely a component of it. (It’s not clear to me whether or not Constant was claiming in the grandparent that that is the main or only reason we enjoy music.)
Castrati: “In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art.”
Blessed Virgin Mary
The Virgin Queen
The Maid of Orleans
Plus all the numerous male and female religious priesthoods in numerous religions (from Christianity to Buddhism) that take vows of sexual abstinence, and were nonetheless honored for such.
I don’t think this in any way undercuts your point, but it is very interesting that the most successful castrati were in fact insanely popular sex symbols during the height of their popularity. They had love affairs and were not infrequently implicated in scandal of one kind or another, although I don’t think they ever got married. Farinelli, the greatest of the great, had rockstar popularity for decades in the 18th century, which came along with sexual status to match. As you might expect, all this business has been written about pretty extensively by historical musicologists in the age of gender studies.
As I’ve said elsewhere, our enjoyment of music seems to be wrapped up in multiple (at times competing) cognitive faculties, and is clearly not reducible to mere sexual/status display, although that is surely a component of it. (It’s not clear to me whether or not Constant was claiming in the grandparent that that is the main or only reason we enjoy music.)