Does the musician shape the instrument or the instrument the musician?
A psychiatrist would say that certain personality types choose certain instruments. A conductor would say it makes no difference, since all musicians are the same — outpatients.
Pop psych has long been essential in the volatile world of music. In this month's High Fidelity Magazine, for example, Pianist Claudio Arrau tells how analysis helped his playing by "clearing my personal psychic jungle," and contends that no musician is ready to stand on his own until he has first stretched out on the analyst's couch and found "selfhood in harmony with the cosmos."
For many musicians, the most fascinating psychic jungle is that of the symphony orchestra. Flutists tell dark tales of suicides among "rejected" second violinists; trumpet players attribute the snobbism of first violinists to an "identity crisis" resulting from their "cloistered, velvet-pants upbringing." And almost everyone is convinced that all oboe and bassoon players are a little batty. London's Royal Philharmonic members nod understandingly when one of their fellow players, Nicholas Reader, admits that he reads fairy tales to his bassoon each night.
Oral Types. Some pop psychers believe that particular instruments tend to form particular personalities, even down to physical similarities. The Boston Symphony's Sherman Walt ascribes great significance to the fact that he is tall and skinny like his bassoon. Berlin Philharmonic Cellist Eberhart Finken is convinced that woodwind players speak with the same tones and inflections as their instruments.
Los Angeles Psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson, an amateur violinist who has treated several prominent musicians, suggests that some clarinetists and flutists might think that they took up their instrument because it was the only one available in the high school band. More likely, it was because they are "oral" types, "great eaters and drinkers. A lot of them are people who have been extremely gratified, and therefore spoiled, and then deprived. The playing of their instrument is an attempt to make up for this."
Among the string players, adds Greenson, sex is the dominating factor. When a solo violinist assumes his proud stance, he exudes a "phallic pride. He wants to make love to the audience. It is an attempt to prove that 'I am lovable, attractive and irresistible.' It sets a mood, and this applies especially to those who doubt their powers and attractiveness." Cellists woo too, by the way they hug their female-shaped cellos. This is healthier, suggests Greenson, because the "cello is more of a grown-up figure, yet passive." Musicologist Dorothy Bales sees the struggle of the string players as "a need to put the self together—to join the yang and yin of their personality. They try to do this by coordinating their right arm with their left." Like all artists, she says, musicians are "a combination of the hysterical and compulsive."