This chap, Mr. Teachout, is the drama critic for the WSJ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Teachout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Teachout ), he's also

This chap, Mr. Teachout, is the drama critic for the WSJ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Teachout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Teachout ), he's also a musician and librettist. The arts, and arts journalists in particular, have a vested interest in genius. If we suddenly find that genius isn't that magic "je ne sais qois" we thought it was for all those years, all that purple prose we wrote about artists in the past suddenly looks a bit stale. In truth in the arts you have an almost unrestrained version of the Matthew effect - early success either through luck or hard work breeds more and more success. This is more true in drama than music - it is more difficult to tell a good actor from a bad actor than the equivalent violinists for example. (Sour grapes alert :-)) I trained as an actor, and I know from my cohort that the ones who are really successful now weren't objectively any better than most of their colleagues at the beginning. Their entire careers now rest on the fact that they had two or three really lucky breaks in a row very early on - choosing the right speech at the showcase and getting that good agent, getting a good tv job early on etc. The upshot is that ten years later, they've been working on their craft constantly and so now ARE objectively better than the classmates they left behind, no contest. It is extremely unusual, though not unheard of, for someone who was unsuccessful at the beginning to go on to develop a high profile career and even then the examples you read about in the press are probably fabrications or half-truths (the cliche of the overnight success for example). I find that arts journalists consistently misrepresent the element of luck. Perhaps because they don't understand, or it undermines them in some way. I've never read an article about an actor friend of mine that has told the truth about how they've come to be successful. It's always something along the lines of "they always new they were special", or "hard work got me where I am today". I'm not suggesting that the actor is lying, although I wouldn't blame them if they did. Your reputation is your career, and if you declare yourself to be a lucky chancer you might damage it. I've always thought that it is more likely to be the journalist justifying why we should look up to the interviewee. In any case, does anyone here know what happened to Mozart's sister? Perhaps it was harder back then for a woman to be a composer than it was for men? The last orchestra I saw was 90% male, so this wouldn't surprise me one bit.