David Teie, a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra who also composes, is getting widespread attention for what may be, to date, his greatest hit.

It was a piece of music written for a tamarin monkey.

In an article published in the journal Biology Letters, Teie and Charles Snowdon, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, reveal the results of a research project in which they demonstrated that monkeys, who are equivocal about music written for people, had decided reactions to music that was written specifically for them.

Teie wrote four pieces informed by the calls of the monkey colony, two based on affiliative calls -- that is, happy ones -- and two based on fear calls (you can hear them on the NPR website, npr.org). While he incorporated characteristics of the monkeys' calls in his music, he was not trying to imitate them nor simply to create sound effects. The ``fear'' piece, written deliberately to agitate the monkeys (a kind of tamarin Metallica), is ``in F minor,'' he says from Prague, Czech Republic, where he is visiting family, ``with a tritone leap in the bass.''

The piece was then boosted three octaves, electronically, to bring it into the normal range of a tamarin. When they heard it, the monkeys exhibited marked signs of anxiety. They reacted to the ``happy'' music with equally definite, but happier, behavior. When exposed to human music, by contrast, they had no reaction.

To enhance the scientific standing of the project, the experiment was run twice; Teie wrote two ``fear'' pieces and two ``happy'' ones. The results were the same.

Teie was the instigator of the project, which grew out of his investigations into how music affects human emotions (which he hopes to present in a book-in-progress called Human Music). His idea is that music written for humans is developed from sounds that were programmed into our brains as they were forming -- sounds heard in the womb. If this was true, he reasons, it makes sense that other species wouldn't respond to human music, and if he could find their triggers, he might be able to write music that would affect them.

Teie has already been extrapolating his findings into music for other species. From his website, musicforcats.com, you can download three songs written for felines.

Teie does also write music for human beings. His flute concerto will have its world premiere with the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra this spring.

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