How to Be a Musical Personality
This is Part 1 in the Competencies Series. See also Part 2 (Social Comeptence), Part 3 (Scientific Competence) and Part 4 (Practical Competence).
A good musician has a great personality. Unless you can convince your crowd of your competence, you won’t convince at all.
Also, you have to be at total peace and happiness with your instrument and your progress towards mastering it.
A musician with a high personal competence needs to possess certain traits:
- Ability to self-motivate
- Desire to be appreciated
- Stand up for his/her principles
- Have a basic set of ethical norms and ideas towards music
The definition of a competence is as follows:
Knowledge + Ability + Ethical Stand-Point = Competence
Note that while Knowledge is good, and having technical abilities is even better, the lack of ethical or normative stand-points make these traits a real competence.
Why is this important?
Well, grab a pad and try to write down what your musical ethics are.
Let me help with this example: I love classical music. I respect the composers and I respect great interprets as well. But I personally think that one shouldn’t take classical music out of the context of other musical styles. I like to compare Jazz standards with Bach cantatas — that’s an ethical value.
Values make you a great personality, values define you and separate you from standard musicians. What are your true values?
4 Comments
In my dealings in the profession, I have always strived to be ethical. However, looking around me and at the ways musicians have acted over the years, I would have to conclude that musical accomplishment has absolutely nothing to do with ethics.
What would you say is relevant to accomplishment then? Also everyone has a different idea of what musical accomplishment actually is. What sort of musical accomplishment are you talking about here?
What I mean by musical accomplishment what Arjun refers to as personal competence. It requires a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work, but no great ethical traits.
Consider the examples of Richard Wagner (anti-Semite), Pablo Picasso (rapist), or Carlo Gesualdo (murderer). Their ethical failings don’t disguise the fact that they were geniuses in their fields.
Ethics need not mean “good etchis”. Maybe I expressed myself a bit unclearly. To complete a competence, you need to have some sort of values towards what you do, in comparison to others. If anti-semitism moved Wagner to write his ominous operas, so be it.
Picasso always had a very offensive attitude to art, and to life. But in the end, that’s what made him “more competent” than his friends. Competence = ability to compete ?