The Performing Musician as Analyst: A shift in depth interpretation

When you speak, take care to speak only from your own experience and your own state. You should not talk about something you haven't lived.

For some years Mario Jacoby, Zollikon, and I were the only performing classical musicians who had retrained as Jungian analysts after many years on the concert platform. More recently several musical artists have been joining in the profession in various Jungian centres. I have responded to Rosemary Gordon's suggestion that it is time to discuss the development and particular uniqueness that classical musicians, professionally trained from the age of four or five, may bring to the practice of analytical psychology. The paper is divided into three parts followed by summarizing conclusions.

The interpretation of classical music requires a particularly strong development of all four functions (Bradway 1964; Jung 1921; Willeford 1976): i) thinking—to memorize the intricate structure and detail of composition (Beethoven's Appassionata, a relatively easy sonata to memorize, has 100,000 notes in it); 2) feeling—to differentiate the degree of dynamic, rubato, pause, shape of phrase, tone colour, and tempo, to mention but a few aspects of the complexity of critical choice the performer has at his/her fingertips; 3) intuition—to recapture the Zeitgeist of the composer's world and expression in stylistic terms; and 4) sensation—to ‘feel’ the whole into appropriate sensual essences of sound and to use the body in executant performance to its ultimate extreme of effective virtuoso playing.

From early childhood the discipline of the ear in listening very exactly develops the musician's sensitivity to the slightest change innuance