# What's a "musical person"?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Schumann was once embarrassed when his wife, at a recital, was asked of her husband: "And is he a musical person as well?"

At the risk of some criticism, I'm thinking about a great-aunt of mine, dead these many years, who didn't know Ravel from ravioli. But she could sit down at her piano and play any song you could name, fully and with all harmonies. She could even improvise on the tunes and provide some grand entertainment.

Am I wrong in considering her more valuable than many conservatory graduates who are certified "musical" and have earned their sheepskins through assiduous study? Who may even be discussed on this forum in tones of great respect?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I think you are wrong, though I compliment you on your choice of aunt. She was a talented, and, yes, musical person. But I don't see that working hard, practising, learning about other styles, listening to music or analysing it are to be downplayed. People who do these things are also 'musical'.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

My Grandfather sounds like your aunt. He played anything and everything on the piano in pubs for years, in London. He couldn't read music, but he knew all the tunes by heart, even a lot of classical. He'd vamp his way through some Beethoven and then play Tea for Two. 

And I'm amazed at many of the people here on TC who are not musicians per se, but know the music very well. Many of you have an excellent musical memory. My musical memory is not so skilled. 

People can be musical without being musicians. People can be musical without any formal training or ability to read music.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

senza sordino said:


> And I'm amazed at many of the people here on TC who are not musicians per se, but know the music very well.


I assumed that nearly everyone here was a musician - so there you go.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Senza Sordino is correct, musicality is within people, trained and not, non-musicians and musicians alike.

What your Aunt did well illustrates this point: musicality, in any degree, is innate. Most people have it to some degree. I would say that only a very few have none at all, and another rather small handful have been dealt a rather extraordinary full hand.

Weighing, with all due respect, your Aunt's musicality as having more worth than that of a conservatory student is just completely off, and actually off the topic. Your Aunt was not only extremely musical, but she had a knack which some have and some don't. Not all the hands are dealt evenly, after all.

Others with as much innate musicality do not have that knack your Aunt had, and within a few years of training and work have far surpassed your Aunts skills, while having that many other related skills as well. Others who have as much or more 'musicality' will never develop the knack - skill which your Aunt had, which by all descriptions was innate, and whether it was visible, thought about, or not -- your Aunt, too, 'worked at it,' in her own way.

What a person has which is innate can be guided, cultivated and developed -- to what degree is anyone's guess. Those manifest abilities may be learned by those who do not have an innate ability, but that essential _je ne sais quois_ which is generally also known as 'it,' as in _having it_ cannot in any way be taught, transmitted, or genuinely mimicked.

This topic could interchangeably be "talent for music," with all the above mentioned being the same.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Stephen Sondheim is a musical person. 'Nuff said.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Stephen Sondheim is a musical person. 'Nuff said.


LOL. ... who studied with Milton Babbitt, another musical person


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## csacks (Dec 5, 2013)

To me, there are different things that we call music. One is a language, with a formal structure and rules, who is processed and analyzed in the left hemisphere. That is the music of the trained and educated musicians. Everybody, with the corresponding effort should be able to learn it. Our memory has different skills to understand the rules of that language, and after some degree of training, memories are converted into that language, following the correct rules and as KenOC´s Aunt, playing what she was remembering. 
Creativity use to be related to right hemisphere function, but there is no evidence to that. That is a gift, reserved to very few. All of you that attended to a music school should have memories of good students and some good professors, very skilled, some of them erudite, but with out the magic spark. 
There is another "music", another part of the brain work, that is processed in the limbic structures, those areas of our brains where we feel emotions, area that is independent of our volition, and that is, using the same analogy of language, like a moving poem. Again only a few are able to get connected to music, and to be touched with it. Berlioz describes, in his book about Beethoven´s symphonies the example of a Danish King who killed one his assistants when he felt touched with something that they were listening. This limbic area has different entry pathways, and some of us might feel ourselves closer to music that to poetry or to painting.
Which one of them is a music person? To me, all of them. In theory, every combination should be possible. That is why there are erudites who do not enjoy music, a few brilliant compositors who are not that well formally educated in music, and some, like me, able only to enjoy it.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

One who is sensitive to music. Nothing complicated there.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

KenOC said:


> Am I wrong in considering her more valuable than many conservatory graduates who are certified "musical" and have earned their sheepskins through assiduous study?


This is one of weirdest questions I've read, because you give us the person with certain ability and habit of using it in certain and ask if she's more valuable than hypotetical person about which you tell nothing except that he/she graduated from conservatory. Being a graduate says nothing here, because you can be graduate who becomes devoted music teacher for kids and thus be more valuable than entertaining aunt, you can be graduate who has no taste in art despite theoretical knowledge on music and starts pretentious progressive metal band, thus being about equal of your aunt or you can be graduate who becomes musicologist and critic and therefore a person not worthy to polish piano keys for your entertaining aunt.

More on subject, there is no denying that there are naturally musical people with innate skills and predispositions about which music majors and classical music artists can only dream, though this is not a quality of ultimate evaluation. Wagner was far less of "musical person" than many unparticular composers.


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## SARDiver (Jan 6, 2014)

A musical person is one who is always getting into treble, asks you for money or to share your resonance because he's baroque (to the point where you want to push him off a clef), and always seems to have a great idea but not the energy to duet. Fortunately, these people are fugue and far between.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

The only people on this earth that are actually non-musical are those who have _amusia_. It's a horrible disorder that can be caused by a congenital anomaly or brain damage. Pitches, rhythm, even _emotional processing of music_ no longer have any distinction, and amusiacs often interpret music as noise and get headaches from it. It affects about 4% of the population. It's also something that Ear Training has not yet been proven to fix.

Freud and Darwin were amusiacs.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

You either hear it, or you don't. The people who can hear meaning in music are the ones who like it, and have a natural visceral propensity; if a person is unable to hear music, this is due to an inherently lower visceral propensity. These people are "crippled" from the start.

A person can demonstrate that they *do* have a good ear/brain connection, by playing an instrument, singing, etc.

What I'm saying is that "your ear" (visceral) is the stimulus that "draws you in" to music. This is a very natural ability, and some folks have it, while others don't. This translates (after the fact) into demonstrable ability, manifest as singing or playing an instrument, or an intense interest or love of music.

This ability is not "debatable" on a credible level by those who are unable to hear music on a visceral level, because this boils down to inherent ability, not will. It's like some people don't enjoy dancing because they can't do it well (comparatively).


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