Several people have been kind enough to respond to my query about what
"intellectual" means when used to describe a musician.

Marc Innes (he uses the word "intelligent" rather than "intellectual"
but I think we're talking about the same thing) sums it up thus:

>An Intelligent Musician is someone who has it all figured out; he knows
>and understands the form and analysis of the composition.  He understands
>the composition horizontally and vertically.  He understands voice
>leading, the arch of the melody, the structure of the composition, and
>he is able to perform the composition in a manner that is true to the
>nature and notation of the composer.  One more thing, he does this in
>manner that seems so easy, natural, and effortless.

Again, I find myself wondering: isn't this a description not of an
intellectual or intelligent musician, but rather of a good (or perhaps
great) one?  Shouldn't any musician playing at a professional level
understand, for example, "voice leading, the arch of the melody, the
structure of the composition?"

And would we really want to say that Rubinstein, identified by Goldsmith
as "not an intellectual" didn't understand these things?

John Smyth contrasts intellectual musicians with sensual or sensational
ones:

>To me the intellectual is the artist who highlights the elements of a
>piece that bring into view its overall concept, or architecture; leaving
>its sensual elements to be intuitively absorbed.  The "sensual" or
>sensational artist is sometimes condemned for leaving the intellectual's
>preoccupations to intuition while reveling in the surface beauties.

and so does Hector Aguilar:

>To understand the word "intellectual," it helps to understand its
>opposite, "instinctive." To my mind, the more instinctive musician
>is more spontaneous, more reflexive to the given moment, and more
>prone to playing for effect.  If you ask the "instinctive" musician
>to explain his/her interpretation, he/she would probably be hard
>pressed to do so.  On the other hand, an "intellectual" musician is
>one who has studied the score very carefully, plays very
>conscientiously, and if asked about his/her interpretation can give
>you a reason for everything that was done.

So these instinctive musicians are something like idiots savant?  Hmmm.
I guess such creatures must exist, but I can't believe that there are
too many bona fide idiots out there who are really savvy enough to be
good musicians.

And Edson Tadeu Ortolan continues with the contrast between the intellectual
and the sensual:

>In Portuguese we denominated "cerebral" (brainly, mindly) an artist
>"without feeling".  Perhaps "intellectual" have this meaning, too:
>brainly, mindly, mental, extremely technical.  Another side there is
>artists with sensibility, sentimental, sensual, emotional, impulsive
>playing.

And I begin to understand that my difficulty in understanding what
"intellectual" could mean when applied to a musician may have stemmed
from the fact that I never thought of intellectuals as boring, dry, or
without feeling.  I am aware that this stereotype is abroad, though.
Indeed a recent study of the images of intellectuals in literature (think
Casaubon in _Middlemarch_) is entitled _Dead Below the Waist_.

So now, how about naming names: which pianists (since we started with
Rubinstein lets stick with pianists for the moment) would you say are
intellectual musicians?  (Brendel has been suggested as one who falls
into this category).  And which pianists are the other kind (sensual?)?
(I guess Argerich would fall into this camp, but again, I'd never want
to suggest that she doesn't understand the music she plays so wonderfully.)

And on a slightly different tack, which performing musicians are
intellectuals in the non-musical sense of the term.  Charles Rosen is
one, of course.  And wasn't Ian Bostridge offered a fellowship in history
at one of the Oxbridge colleges?

Who else?
David Cozy
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