Some Questions of Musicality and Musical Education of the Adolescents

A harmoniously developed personality, being the objective of socialist education, calls for a new conception of musicality and musical education, especially now that music is being spread on a mass scale as a result of the development of communication media. It is necessary to find new forms of musical education for adolescents, especially for apprentices, because the desirable social integration of the adolescent’s personality can be brought about through the intermediary of musical education. By analysing the opinions on musicality formed during the past hundred years, we come to the conclusion that it is a complex phenomenon which is of primary importance for expressing the relationship of man’s psychology to music. Qualitatively specific connection of individual musical abilities, conditioned by basic talent, can best be developed in the adolescence. On the basis of long term researches and observations it can be said that the sense of rhythm, the ear, the development of musical imagination and ideas, musical memory and the emotional receptiveness of music pass through a critical test in the period of adolescence. Moreover, the erotisation of the sex, the formation of attitudes in the ethical sphere and, above all, the creation of superior needs — the character of these products being outside the aesthetic and musical sphere — these represent the most essential links in the chain of a .harmonious development of the adolescent’s personality. And these can be formed and consolidated by musical education. Musical education of the adolescents is necessary. But it must be preceded by a completely newly conceived system of musical education at the primary school, corresponding to the changing social, technical and style conditions.