Learning Music: Orality or Writing?

Since the dawn of time, music has primarily been transmitted orally. In most musical traditions — African, Celtic, Eastern, or shamanic — people learn to play by ear, through imitation, attentive listening, observing and repeating with elders. This has been true for centuries, long before the invention of musical notation in the Middle Ages and its development during the Renaissance.

Even today, many living musical practices — traditional music, jazz, popular genres, sound healing — continue to be taught orally, in the moment, through sharing. This method of learning encourages intuition, presence, body awareness, improvisation, and personal expression.

What orality conveys goes far beyond notes: it transmits groove, musicality, phrasing, a quality of sound, intention, and energy that written notation often struggles to capture. The Celtic bards and druids knew this well: they never wrote down their music or epic tales. Their transmission relied on memory, orality, and direct human connection.

On the other hand, written music becomes essential when harmonic or formal complexity reaches a level that cannot be memorized. It allows for faithful transmission, detailed study, and structural analysis. In this way, notation is a valuable tool for rigor, transmission, and deeper understanding.

From a cognitive perspective, these two approaches activate different areas of the brain:

• Orality engages the right hemisphere (intuition, holistic vision, movement, natural musicality)

• Writing stimulates the left hemisphere (logic, analysis, structure, visual memory)
  

In pedagogy, it's essential to recognize these two learning styles. Some people learn by ear and movement, others through reading and formal understanding. Ideally, one should combine both approaches and allow each person to find their own path.

My Personal Experience: Between Two Worlds

I myself began learning the harp in a very academic way at the conservatory, with written music, music theory, and score reading. Later, in the department of traditional Breton music, I discovered a completely different way of learning: by ear, in direct practice, through interaction with masters.

Then, through exploring improvisation in early music — medieval, Renaissance, and baroque — I experienced a true fusion of these two worlds. The structure of basso continuo, ancient modes, ornamentation learned by ear... all these are tools that blend orality and notation.

With harp therapy, I am rediscovering the power of musical intention in a non-written form of music, created in the present moment, to support emotions, states of consciousness, and individual needs.

Two Paths, One Journey

Oral music encourages:

• active listening and presence

• improvisation and free expression

• auditory and bodily memory

• human and intuitive connection

• freedom and spontaneity in musical gestures
  

Written music enables:

• formal precision

• access to complex compositions

• musical analysis and score reading

• faithful transmission and structure

• development of logical thinking

These two approaches are not in opposition. They complement each other.

To Go Further

This is the vision I share through my courses:

• La Harpe Intuitive: a sensitive, living course in French focused on an oral and spontaneous approach to the harp.

• The Soul of Modal Improvisation (in English): a comprehensive course to explore modes, free improvisation, and resonance, bridging tradition and freedom.
  

Two paths, two languages, one single music waiting to resonate through you.