ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the complexity of the adjective "musical" when it is attributed to people. The term "intelligent" has been and continues to be very much debated, especially in the wake of the theory presented by the American psychologist Howard Gardner on the different kinds of intelligence. Studies in genome mapping are making huge advances nowadays, and they may possibly be able to offer more precise information on how many genes control intelligence, or as Gardner says, multiple intelligences, including the musical. Musical intelligence is the ability to understand or produce music, where "produce" includes both the ability to perform and to compose/improvise. What interest is to understand the role of education and environment in the various phases that musical intelligence passes through on its way to the state of adulthood. For a behaviour to be considered entirely musical, it is more important that different musical skills mature and interact with each other.
