Page 36 - How to Shine on Stage

ganized on three levels: sensorimotor, intellectual, and affective. There
are connections between them, defining the overall experience of music.
He distinguishes between primary (sensitivity to pitch, loudness, du-
ration of tones, timbre, and melodic factors, such as perfect and relative
pitch, memorization of tones, melody reproduction, melodic discrimina-
tion) and secondary factors (intelligence, self-confidence, temperament,
perseverance).
One of the first authors to criticize atomist perspectives of musical
34 ability was the Hungarian psychologist Révész (1953, in Mirković Ra-
doš, 2010). He draws a clear distinction between the concepts of musical
ability, musicality, and talent. He sees abilities as innate capacities ena-
bling people to develop general and specific forms of behaviour. He un-
How to Shine on Stage with maturation and with the appropriate incentives from the environ-
derlines that these are latent, potential abilities that find their expression

ment. His definition of musicality is the capacity for aesthetic enjoyment
of music, which is innate and represents a universal human trait. Differ-
ences between individuals are believed to lie in the intensity of the man-
ifestation of this capacity. The measure of musicality is the ability to
understand the structure of a musical composition.
Boyle (1992, in Deutsch, 2012) defines musical ability as a broad
spectrum of listening, performing, analysing music, and goal formation.
He calls for the need to separate:
1. musical abilities that are innate (capacity to learn music, especially
to develop musical skills).
2. musical achievements which depend on education, external factors,
and on interest (in addition to musical abilities).
These two concepts are strongly interrelated and difficult to separate.
Gordon (2015) examined the question of the innate versus acquired
nature of musical abilities. He argues that the level of musical giftedness
is innate. The latter can be developed up to the age of nine, after which
the development of musical abilities stabilizes. Research conducted
among infants also points to an inherited capacity for music in humans.
Sandra E. Trehub (1993) states that a baby of three months perceives the
intonation, melodiousness, and intensity of the mother’s song; a baby of
four months compares rhythmic structures; that already in babies there
is a sensitivity to simple rhythmic patterns, that a baby of seven to ten
months discerns semitone changes in simple Western melodies; and, be-
fore the age of six months, a baby is already able to imitate the tone’s
pitches and enjoys doing so. Most children lose these abilities when they