Book Description

Excerpt from The Measurement of Musical Talent Musical talent is not one thing. To amount to anything, there must be a hierarchy of talents, sufficiently related to work together. Hierarchies of talents may present entirely different organizations in different individuals. The analysis of musical talent aims first to locate the dominant traits and then to determine qualitatively and quantitatively the composition or characteristics of each group, or hierarchy of traits. The term musical talent is therefore used in a collective sense. It is quite possible to make a fairly exhaustive classification of the essential traits of musical talent. This may be done by considering, first, the characteristics of sound which constitute music and, second, the mental powers which are needed for the appreciation of musical sounds. The elements of musical sound are really three, namely: pitch, time and intensity. The fourth attribute of sound, extensity, which represents the spatial character, is negligible for the present purpose. Pitch is the quality, the essence of a sound. Timbre, usually spoken of as quality, is merely a pitch complex. Consonance, harmony, and clang fusions are also pitch-complexes. Rhythm represents aspects of time and intensity. This classification of the fundamental aspects of musical sounds gives us a basis for the classification of musical talents into the ability to appreciate and the ability to express respectively, pitch, time, and intensity of tone. Each of these may, of course, be subdivided in great detail. Turning then to the human side of music, we find that the capacity for the appreciation and expression of music may be divided, for convenience, into four fundamental capacities; namely, sensory, the ability to hear music; motor, the ability to express music; associational, the ability to understand music; and affective, the ability to feel music and express feeling in music. By combining these two classifications - the elements of musical sounds and the capacity of the human individual - we shall obtain the principal groups of musical talent. Arranging the principal measurements now available in the psychology of music laboratory on the above bases of classification, we get a scheme like the accompanying list of measurements on a singer. Certain modifications of this list would, of course, be necessary in Section II to adapt it to other performers, such as the violinist or the pianist. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.