Musical Temperament

Yeah, okay, I have pushed myself to the point that I got short-tempered last night with a friend at our rehearsal. Except that when I'm short-tempered I just sort of seeth inside, I don't tend to lash out unless I'm feeling extremely attacked...I forgot to print out the music for Sunday morning even though she e-mailed them to us, and so I had to share with the other guitar player and then transpose all his music cause everything was capo-ed (Capo? how do you turn it into a past tense verb?). Bottom line: I got frustrated with myself. I'm really tired and worn out and facing some high level anxiety about performing my solo this evening for that wedding I'm going to be playing in on Saturday. I also just found out that they have a flute player too, and so now I'm thinking to myself, "Why don't they just have her play the song?" because it was really written for flute or violin. Anyway, I'm out of time to practice, and I have to perform tonight.

When I take a step outside of myself right now, I'm really intrigued by how quickly my anxiety is escalating the closer it gets to performance time. I just read a book about the Musical Temperment (1996) and the author, Anthony E. Kemp, uses various studies to show that in general, musicians tend to have higher levels of anxiety than others, are more sensitive, are more introverted, and tend to be more independent. He wanted to see if it was true that people who play the same instruments have similar temperaments. According to this study, there was some truth to that. Here's what they say about cellists:

Ben-Tovim and Boyd (1990) maintain that the cello requires a quiet and reflective intelligence and work that is equally conscientious and sustained as that required by the violin. They also suggest that cellists are often of a shy temperament. The 34 cellists in my research very much confirmed these suggestions, displaying significant levels of introversion over and above that shown by all the string players. In fact, they emerged as even more aloof than the rest of the string players who, as we have seen were already characterized by aloofness. Their other trait, also associated with introversion, was self-sufficiency which emerged along with a definite level of astuteness. This is an interesting combination: the cellist's introversion combines with a social awareness, two qualities that, at face value, do not relate well together. Perhaps Ben-Tovim and Boyd have an important insight in this respect when they suggest that cellists are characterized by a 'quiet and unstressed sociability.'

Interesting.