Music Understanding and Intelligences

According to Gardner’s ideas on multiple intelligences, people use those seven intelligences to solve problems or develop skills. For instance, when musical pitches are difficult to identify, we can take advantage of linguistic intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence to understand them. 

Linguistic intelligence can be used to find the storyline behind abstract music. Just like language study, the process of formal music education begins with recognising symbols. Music notes on the score look exactly like letters, which compose words. Writers express emotion with words, as do composers. When notes create a piece of music, it contains an amount of information. People can deliver the music using instruments or voice only when they get the meaning of the information. Every piece of music can be seen as a story told by the composer. Together with the varieties of personal experience and emotion, the player/singer may read and understand the note. This feels like having communication with the composers beyond the barriers of time and space. 

If the player is unable to obtain the meaning directly during the note reading or structure analysis, intrapersonal intelligence can be used to understand the concept from another angle. As a matter of fact, not all of us learn music in such a serious way. Many informal learners get in touch with music mainly via the sound, but they still can enjoy plenty of music genres. Generally, people appreciate music by their own standards. Whether they feel comfortable or not directly affects their preference. As a listener, the individual receives sense stimulation as soon as the music starts. When a melody evokes strong emotion people prefer it to another melody which does not achieve this. However, they may fail to appreciate brilliant pieces which appear unrelated to modern life, such as baroque compositions. In my childhood, I was not interested in baroque music. Fugues were strange and difficult for me, but I gradually changed my mind when I understood more about the history of fugues and the background of baroque music. I watched relevant movies and visited several churches. With the understanding of the social and cultural context at that time, I was able to feel the beauty of harmony.

Music is such an abstract work to learn, it is not easy to create images in the mind through the tones or rhythms. However, by using our full capacities and multiple intelligences, the images are easy to get. In terms of any other form of learning, a good command of the associative personal intelligences can enhance comprehension.