We explain what a music lover is, their relationship with musical professions and their typical attitudes. Also, what is audiophilia.
What is a music lover?
A music lover is a person who demonstrates a very great passion or a very intense devotion for music especially for classical or academic music. This word derives from melomania, which is considered a hobby or even an excessive fanaticism for music.
Although the term melomania is composed of the Greek voices melos (“singing accompanied by music”) and mania (“madness”), this condition is rarely considered harmful, dangerous, or an illness.
Music lovers simply focus their interests on music consumption, that is, buying and listening to records, collecting and classifying recordings. In some cases they learn to play instruments and in others they simply treasure the experiences they have had through music.
For that reason, someone who enjoys and knows a lot about music is a music lover, although in a technical sense there is a distinction between melomania and audiophilia: An audiophile is interested in the recording and reproduction of sound, especially music, but also the human voice. It is common for a music lover to also demonstrate audiophile traits, or for an audiophile to tend toward music mania.
Finally, not every musician or composer can always be called a music lover, although it is normal that, since music is their area of work, they know a lot about it and are passionate about it. But the term “music lover” is usually reserved for people who, not coming from a professional background in music, are passionate about it.
See also: Musical intelligence
Typical attitudes of a music lover
Each music lover is different and lives his passion in a unique way, given that it is not a real disease that has common symptoms, nor a select club for which entry conditions must be met. However, it is common to see the following attitudes in inveterate music lovers:
- memorize contextual information or the production of the albums and concerts that excite them. They know versions, variations and executions and are able to distinguish one from the other.
- recognize historical musical trends and they have a broad or specialized musical education: they may be enthusiastic about all the music of the 20th century, or they may be especially attracted to European baroque, or Asian rock and roll.
- are part of specialized communities in which musical information is shared and who share their passion in different ways.
- spend a lot of their time listening to music attend concerts or performances, and they spend much of their money on purchasing instruments, recordings or attending specialized courses. They are true enthusiasts of musical knowledge.
- listen to music every day in some cases all day, and they experience it as more than a simple backdrop.
Continue with: Art
References
- “Melomania” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Are you an audiophile or music lover?” (video) at Audio46 in Spanish.
- “The 10 fundamental qualities that every music lover should have” in Cultura Colectiva.
- “Melomania” on Wikipedia (Portuguese).
