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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
 
Cassettes are musical, CDs are unmusical. Mystery solved.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Czarivey,
what about Jazz? I love classical music, but I find musicality in many other forms and cultures as well and I don´t think, that I am alone in this.
Menahem Pressler, world famous pianist and leader of the Beaux Arts Trio had the highest respect for Oscar Peterson for example. Friedrich Gulda loved and played jazz, just to name two who were classical musicians.
czarivey
5,680 posts
 
Detlof, I mostly listen to jazz, but nevertheless, in general, classically trained musician is able to retrieve the best possibilities of instrument one plays. There are lots of classically trained musicians in jazz with improvisational talents and there are also pure talents in jazz who started just playing(Joey DeFrancesco), but still seeking the ways to improve either taking lessons or enrolling into the higher musical education which mostly not the case with garage and rock(XSmall to Small in terms of musicality:-))
frogman
7,358 posts
 
While reasonably good technical command of the instrument is necessary in order to be musical, musicality is not dependent on having the very best technical command. Priorities are different for jazz and classical players. While a top classical musician may work at developing a tone with ultimate purity and control, and the kind of flawless technique that is required to execute ever-more-difficult material composed for his instrument, the jazz player puts the emphasis on developing a tone that is highly individualistic and rhythmic flexibility that not only is what is needed for jazz, but would be inappropriate for most classical music. While classical players may in many cases have an exceptional technical command of the instrument, they are not, as a group, more musical than jazz players.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Frogman,

I fully agree. I would even go as far as to say, that technical perfection, both in classical as well as in jazz music is the prerequisit of a great artist. This alone does not necessarily makes his playing "musical". There are performes in both fields with stupendous technicality, whose performances are "dead", without life, do not take you in and in the end just bore you. They do not "live" their music but just use their score or theme to show off how good they are.
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