John Fiset replies to my question about what "intellectual" means when the word is used to describe a musician: >Think of the way Alfred Brendel and Arhur Rubinstein might approach >playing, say a Mozart or Beethoven piano sonata or a Beethoven piano >concerto. What do you notice as the differences of interpretation? Well, I've noticed listening to his Schubert and Schumann trios that Rubinstein's approach to these pieces (and that of his partners too) is lively, emotional, almost raucous. As Rubinstein, at least according to Harris Goldsmith, is "not an intellectual," I wonder if it is precisely this exuberance which keeps him, in Goldsmith's estimation, from being one. Is "intellectual" in this context code for cool, calm, measured, something like that? I suppose a grasp of the overall architecture of the pieces a musician plays might come into a definition of musicianly intellectualism, but it seems to me that if a musician fails to grasp the forms of the compositions he or she is interpreting this would not mean that he or she is a non-intellectual musician. It would mean he or she is a bad musician. (Goldsmith allows that, although Rubinstein is not an intellectual, he does grasp the architecture of the pieces he plays.) I'll not sure if I can muster out of my collection Rubinstein and Brendel playing the same pieces, but I'll see what I can do. Thanks for responding. David Cozy [log in to unmask]