Development of Creative Thinking in the Structure of Musical Aptitude

The problem of children's musical aptitude has been a constant study subject for many years. The interest in this issue has significantly increased over the last time as a result of expansion of the children's audience involved in the familiarization with programs of the artistic and aesthetic cycle in the institutions of additional education for kids all over Russia. Handling the problem of children's musical aptitude, the question of its structure comes up. Musicality is usually considered to be the basis of musical aptitude. It is the quality of mentality thanks to which a person can acquire tonally coded information conveyed to him and change it into the system of images and feelings. Musicality is the transformer in which the semiotic musical codes are processed. We would like to underline the correlation of creativity and musicality in the structure of musical aptitude. It is exactly the creativity (creative thinking) that causes the ability of a musician to transform musical images and to find new meanings. Thus, we have elaborated the model of musical aptitude that includes the following components: Musicality and creative thinking (basis); Special abilities; A motivational component; A personal component. Musical aptitude is thought as dynamic, systematically developing during a child's life structure of mentality that shows availability of a child's potential to achieve high results in the sphere of musical activity in general and vocal artistic performance in particular. The testing of creativity carried out according to the methods of E.P. Torrance "Completion of a Drawing" and J.P. Guilford "Unusual Use" gave us a chance to estimate the development level of creative thinking of pupils in such directions as verbal and fine art creativity. For example, the test of E.P. Torrance helped us to single out children who didn't show their worth at the lessons, but had the high creative potential in accordance with the results of the testing. Orientation toward the potential character of creativity of plenty of modern children caused elaboration of the methods that could also estimate motor and sound creativity. Moreover, the connection of creative thinking with musicality was found out. It appeared in the ability of personification of a musical image of the piece, its interpretation, development and originality. All of the aforesaid make it possible to consider musical aptitude as a complex quality of the person's mentality that is characterized by the high development degree of the abilities for music based on the development degree of creative thinking and musicality. We find out close correlation of creative thinking and musicality at the same time. It allows us to conclude that these two qualities form one - the creative component - in the structure of musical aptitude.

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