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What is Musicality?

Hello fellow music lovers,

I am upgrading my system like a lot of us who follow Audiogon. I read a lot about musicality on Audiogon as though the search for musicality can ultimately end by acquiring the perfect music system -- or the best system that one can afford. I really appreciate the sonic improvements that new components, cables, plugs and tweaks are bringing to my own system. But ultimately a lot of musicality comes from within and not from without. I probably appreciated my Rocket Radio and my first transistor radio in the 1950s as much I do my high-end system in 2010. Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are. Most people appreciate good music but some people are born more musical than others and appreciate singing in the shower as much as they do listening to a high-end system or playing a musical instrument or attending a concert. Music begins in the soul. It is not only a function of how good a system you have.

Sabai
sabai
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Musicality is when you turn around to see who's there when you're convinced someone said something or made a noise.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
HUH? You just said something, but it ain't musical. I must be deaf.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Frogman,

with all due respect and fully agreeing with the distinction you make between perceived emotion and emotion that is felt as well as apologies for being a nitpicking old curmudgeon, I still insist, that emotion is NOT in the music. It may be in the composer, who translates it into his score, it may be in the interpreter, who through his training, his artistry, his concept of the score and perhaps, but by no means always, by his being moved emotionally by the composer's score, translates it into sound, which again in the listener may or may not cause emotions. In a way, I don't like what I am saying, I love music, but I also try to stand for what I at least think is precise.

To be honest, it is only when I envisage this amazing chain of events, of how the magic of what is music evolves, that I stand in awe of the mystery what music is and what it can do to us.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Detlof wrote,

"HUH? You just said something, but it ain't musical. I must be deaf."

Do you by any chance have an English translation?

;-)

Cheers
learsfool
1,215 posts
 
Detlof, I think I see where you are coming from now. What I think you mean is that music, on the page, is nothing without the performer(s) to bring it to life, and you are also saying that it is the performer who imparts emotion to it. Yet, you also say that the composer can translate emotion into his score. Here is where I am not certain you can have that both ways. I think it is clear that very often a composer is intending to project a definite, specific emotion through the music. So in this sense, emotion is indeed part of the music, and this is what Frogman is saying in his post.
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