I've often wondered where musical talent comes from. The ability to press a certain combination of keys on a piano, finger a combination of keys on a bassoon, or press down a string at a certain spot on the neck of a violin is a mechanical skill. Much like fixing a sink or building a chair, it is certainly not easy but it can be taught to anyone with mechanical aptitude. Creating music, though, is a special gift altogether. It is a gift which transcends the mere mechanical and touches our soul. So what is it about music that makes one person able to do that, while another can't?
An understanding of the issue requires us to consider the different categories of "musician," as they are all different and all possess certain characteristics unique to their distinctive category. There are three categories; Creators, Recreators, and Academics. Creators are those who actually compose music, Recreators are the ones who take existing music and recreate it for listeners, and Academics are those who study music from an academic standpoint. This last category would include musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and theorists. Theses categorizations are not mutually exclusive and you can find individuals who fall within more than one of these categories. For example, very few Academics reach that goal without first being Recreators.
Yet even this phenomenon begs certain questions. For example, you will find that most composers also play an instrument, but this is no more than an example of the horse coming before the cart. Learning to play an instrument is the first step in any traditional process of musical education. It is how a fledgling musician learns how music functions. Without that training, could someone compose music? The answer is yes.
There is no reason why the principals of composition could not be taught without the foundation of instruction on a specific instrument. In other words, one does not need to play an instrument in order to write music for it. Beethoven did not play every instrument in the orchestra, yet he wrote for them. The same can be said for most composers. While they often gravitate towards writing music for their own instruments, that is not always the case and it merely takes a quick glance at any prolific composer's body of work to find examples of music that the composer himself could not play. The same could be said of taking an academic approach to music.
Be that as it may, the real issue of inquiry here is, to put it plainly, what makes a musician tick? Regardless of which category (or combination of categories) a musician falls within, what is it that separates a competent musician from an exceptional musician? Are there personality traits, characteristics, or even medical/psychological phenomena that one can associate with what most people think of as "musical genius?"
Areas of future inquiry with relation to musicians:
- Mental instability
- Propensity for drug and/or alcohol use and abuse
- OCD and other related disorders
- High IQ
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