Why workaholics are not Mozarts? Musical abilities in post-cognitive era

Abstract

The paper is looking at recent publications on musical abilities suggesting the most promising trends for future research. Musical abilities and talent are the most revealing for the whole agenda of giftedness; therefore, it’s easier to see the most arguable points and accents characterizing scholarly discussion in abilities’ and talent discourse. In the first place, this discussion is the hardest addressing the idea of «deliberate practice» that is now declining but used to be very influential in the end of XXth — beginning of the XXI century. «Deliberate practice» had been invented to deny and reject the very notion of giftedness as an inborn psychological category. Secondly, contemporary psychology of musical giftedness and talent gives the leading role to motivation, inner need in music making and bio-evolutionary psychological resources at the expense of more traditional cognitive abilities like pitch, rhythm and musical memory. The author argues that motivational and emotionally based factors are the clue to the concept of musical talent and creativity. Summarizing contemporary psychology of music research, the author joins the nativist approach to musical abilities’ discourse and suggests finding the new foundation for musical talent’s development beyond cognitive resources of human mind and its traditionally accepted measurements.