9/3/2023 0 Comments Lack of musicalityWe can study any language (musical or spoken) in an academic/intellectual way (with books, scores etc), but no amount of study can replace the benefits (and pleasure) of actually using the language in real-life situations. Therefore we will discuss this enormous field under the heading Psychology. An emotional approach to music uses music to express how we feel in our deepest inner self about almost everything that is important to us. This personal, emotive musicality has everything to do with how we feel, and not just about music. Taking a northern musican to spend time in Naples (or to Latin America) for a time is probably equally as beneficial as taking a Napolitano musician to Northern Europe. This is why, throughout history, there have been so many wonderful Jewish musicians, and also why so many fine musicians are originally (even if only genetically) from hot-country cultures but have been trained in colder countries thus acquiring both aspects of musicality. Most of the greatest musicians however use lots of both ingredients – combining intelligence and emotivity as in a sweet and sour sauce. Certainly in Europe, people from the hotter countries tend to be more emotional than intellectual in comparison with people from colder countries (with the exception of Russia!). Singers are very often the ultimate emotional musicians, with string players tending to be somewhere more in the middle. Rather than thinking about music, the emotive musician feelsit, in a powerful, emotional way. These are the experts in the skills of “ Musical Language“.Įmotional musicality is a more personal, individual way of expressing music. Keyboard players, conductors and composers are often the most strongly intellectual musicians. This is an expressivity that comes from thinking about music. Intellectual musicality seeks to maximise expressivity and communication through exploiting to the maximum the knowledge and study of the music in terms of phrasing, musical styles, form, structure, articulations etc. Fortunately in music, there is not only room for both, but in fact a definite need for both these extremes …… and for everything in between.Īctors, like musicians, also operate between these two opposite poles of emotionality and intellectualism, using their intellectual knowledge (in addition to their emotional instincts) to improve their performance skills. To simplify greatly we could differentiate between the intellectual “interpreter” and the emotional “performer”. At the other extreme are those who are very musical in an intense, intuitive, passionate, personal and emotional way but with less intellectual contribution to their expressivity. At one extreme are musicians who are very “musical” in an intellectual way but don’t show much personal emotional involvement. We can see this best by looking at the extremes of each. Musicality, like philosophy perhaps, can be usefully subdivided into two overlapping areas: emotional and intellectual. Stephen Isserlis likes to say “don’t play like a cellist”! It is, hopefully, these “higher” objectives, rather than a simple desire to entertain, please, or impress someone with our mechanical skill, that inspire us to play “better”, to improve our technique and in fact, to play music at all. It is also a form of mind-body therapy through which we – both players and listeners – unite our physical, intellectual (thinking), spiritual, and feeling selves into one, finding emotional release and intense human contact and communication. Music, (especially “classical” music ?), is philosophy without words: a search for meaning, beauty, pleasure, harmony, understanding, timelessness and universality. Here we are entering into the twin domains of musicality and interpretation, which then lead us into the larger fields of psychology and philosophy. But what is it that converts good technical playing into powerfully communicative music-making? And, going deeper still, why play well – or even why play music at all ? These are much bigger and more important questions. Of course, it does take a lot of work to train them in these skills, and the question of how to play the instrument “well” technically is an enormous field of study (see Instrumental Technique). When we watch a musician play, it looks as though it is the fingers, hands and arms that are playing the instrument. We can analyse and dissect the different components of musical interpretation in the same way that we analyse and dissect the elements of Instrumental Technique and Musical Language.
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