What is Musicality?

Detlof,

Thanks for your thoughtful and sensitive posts.

For me musicality is a combination of a high level of artistry on the part of the performers, a deep appreciation for music and great sensitivity on the part of the listener, and a system that is good enough to reproduce performances well. This leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation. I believe that we are looking at a continuum here, not a single standard that can be written in stone and defined by absolutes. Nevertheless, there is a point at which one may say the performance was not moving, or the system was not up to reproducing the performance with sufficient nuance. As for the listener? How do you begin to talk about sensitivity and music appreciation without opening a Pandora's Box?

Sabai,

thank you for your kind words. Pandora's Box indeed, judging from some of the remarks here.
There is no society on earth without some kind of music. In the old Chinese dynastes there were of the opinion, that if the music was "good", the state was in order. A good point perhaps, because music often seems to reflect the "mood" certain strata of society are in. Just think of jazz developing from the 30 of the last century onward.
Everyone knows that music can have a deep influence on our state of mind, but actually nobody really knows how this connecting of mind and organised sound is possible.

Is it the sound that makes us like music or the emotions that music creates that's the key?

I think the latter which makes it impossible to quantify what is musical or not.

I seem to recall even Vulcans with no emotions on Star Trek employed music. Most illogical! :-)

I recently acquired a recording of Healing Tibetian Bell "music". I use quotes because its more of sounds than any music I am familiar with it. I will give it a play over the weekend and see if it draws me in. If so, then I suppose it is "musical"

Mapman, one answer to your question might be that emotions, while a part of music, are not all of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't talk about "musicality" as something separate from "emotion." Sometimes a composer wants a completely non-emotional effect, and there are many different types and ways to create them. The ability to create these effects would also be considered pre-requisite for having good musicality. So while the latter part of your question is a big part of the initial attraction to any given piece of music, ultimately I think the former part of the question is actually closer to what constitutes musicality.

I didn't go back and reread the rest of this thread, by the way, so this may have been already mentioned, but generally when musicians use the word musicality they are referring to phrasing, or one's ability to make nice musical phrases - again, not necessarily an emotional thing, though of course it often is.

Having a good sense of rhythm would also be a very obvious pre-requisite for musicality. Ultimately, music is the organization of sound in time. Just some thoughts on your question. By the way, most certainly the bells would be considered music, and musical.