MUSICAL APTITUDES ARE OF TWO KINDS, namely, those for
musical reception and those for musical production. The first
we may call musicality and the second talent. The two are sup-
plementary, in that the greater the degree of musicality the finer
will be the performance in musical value, provided the requisites
for musical production are present. But musicality can be pres-
ent without much talent, and much talent without musicality.
Thus, there are many more very musical persons than good
musical performers, and there are musical performers whose
production is technically superior but musically only acceptable
or even inferior. There is also the relationship between the two,
that a highly musical person will have an inner drive to attain
increasingly higher technical proficiency in order to give ade-
quate expression to the inner musical experience, while technical
aptitude is in itself an encouraging factor because it results in
satisfactory accomplishment. In other words, the person of
insufficient musicality will have no incentive to push on to tech-
nical proficiency, while he of insufficient muscular adaptability
will be discouraged from trying by poor results. Satisfactory
accomplishment in performance is basically dependent upon
muscular dexterity. But it is obvious that without a sufficient
endowment in musicality there can be no sufficient incentive for
attaining dexterity in performance, and even if such dexterity
is attained the performance will be empty.

Consequently, musicality is the primary requisite either in
musical receptivity or in musical performance, and the attention
of research workers in the field of musical talent has centered in
the main on the discovery of the attributes of the musically in-
clined personality, although the musical production aspect has
not been ignored.

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