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Mozart was a guy who was on his way to possibly becoming history's best maker of music, except he died an unfortunately early death at the age of 35. He was wri

Mozart was a guy who was on his way to possibly becoming history's best maker of music, except he died an unfortunately early death at the age of 35. He was writing tuneful, listenable, harmonious music at the age of four. This is a level of talent far beyond what Sivers was talking about.

binarysoul 16y ago
Let me ask, what were you doing at age 4? IIRC 4 year olds have a lot of free time (to practice etc...)
- PakG1 16y ago
  Wow, you serious? You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just because they have a lot of time to practice? I think it'd be better to ask for a scientific study on the subject for 4 year olds, except finding an acceptable sample size would be nigh impossible.
  - joeyo 16y ago
    > You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just > because they have a lot of time to practice? Honestly, it's a pretty reasonable hypothesis. That's not to say that narrow-minded focus and incessant practice on a single skill at such a young age (or any age) produces a balanced or happy individual, but I have no problem believing that it would produce someone with skills far in excess of 99% of their peers.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      There is obviously a natural advantage to people with a keen sense of hearing. The ability to differentiate tones, etc. However, I spent a lot of my teenage years playing bass guitar with no musical training (literally zero, I have no formal musical lessons to my name) and I learnt the ability to not only to decipher a songs bass music, but I was able to actual transcribe its tablature simply by ear - IE in many songs I could actually hear how the song was being played, not just the notes that were played. My high school music teacher literally described me as tone and pitch deaf and basically declared me a write-off. I received virtually no tutelage, in fact I believe I spent a large majority of that class outside the class from being kicked out. My only musical ability was to moderately hold a beat. I opted out of music classes, and my brother had an old amp and had one of his friends bass guitars over and showed me to play something basic. I bought a bass guitar and practiced an hour or so a day just fucking around and trying to play along with songs. My passion was always and still is writing. I spent much of my time writing video game reviews with my bass guitar strapped around my neck. 1/2 of my learning was simply keeping my instrument so close that it became my object of distraction. Of stories I've heard of child prodigy are largely along the lines of a parent practicing in front of a child and when the parent is out of the room the child attempts to imitate their parent and doesn't do half bad. On the subject of imitation I like to tell the story of my first golf swing. I was ~20, I'd never so much as held a golf club (a putter at crazy golf doesn't really count, 5ft vs 200 yards is a huge difference) before, but I've seen people golf all my life on TV and in real life from friends. I went to the driving range with my future-father-in-law and my future-brother-in-law, both knew I'd never really golfed but neither knew I'd never hit a golf ball in my life. I borrowed one of their drivers (thankfully my father-in-law is actually a left-handed golfer) and I figured no pressure, they expect I won't be good so just do it. I watched a few guys take swings and I did the same. I hit 250 yards (which is actually a semi-pro-range IIRC), and never looked back. I still regularly manage to get in the 230 range without any form of practice. I take a couple of trips to a driving range a year - if that. I didn't go this year and I don't expect my shot to be any under 200 when I go next year. Peoples greatest failure is in failing before trying. If you have a bad mental attitude you will never succeed no matter how naturally 'talented' you are. However, the least talented person will always succeed if they have a strong mental attitude and a whole heap of perseverance. There are a lot of fantastically talented and inspirational musicians out there who have failed miserably at what they could have been. A key example is Iggy Pop and the Stooges, who despite influencing countless musicians across almost a half-dozen decades, they never hit huge. Whilst KISS who basically everyone knows isn't the most musically talented band is ridiculously world famous, not because of talent but because of life-long hard work and not drug addled binges.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Obviously this is only one study, but have you heard of László Polgár? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r He is the father of 3 chess prodigies. The interesting thing is, he decided very specifically to try and raise his children to be chess grandmasters, in an attempt to prove that geniuses can be made. Quote from his wiki article: "He is interested in the proper method of rearing children, believing that "geniuses are made, not born". Before he had any children, he wrote a book entitled Bring Up Genius!, and asked for a wife who would help him carry out the experiment. " Quote from the article on one of his daughters, who is the strongest female chess player in the world: "She and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age.[3] "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r
todayiamme 16y ago
I am afraid that mozart at the age of 4, more or less played the works of Bach et al. to audiences after 2 years of strict practice with his father. (He saw that his son had interest in music when he would patiently sit through his sister's lessons and then he started pushing him to see how far he could go) The Mozart we know didn't emerge until he was a teenager and he started composing at the grand old age of 13. Yes, he did have a talent, but perhaps that talent was the gift of accelerated learning. Not the gift of magical music.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  I don't understand why you think this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-SzzhUtws&feature=fvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-SzzhUtws&feature=fvw
  - todayiamme 16y ago
    No actually I read that his so called "compositions" at that age were heavily guided by his father and were merely modified improvisation of Bach/other pieces he was taught. The Mozart we know didn't emerge till a later age. By the way, I don't mind being wrong. So, let's figure out the truth and I'll email you, okay?
    - cynicalkane 16y ago
      Where did you read this? Musicology journal? Popular biography? Oprah Magazine? In academic musicology unsubstantiated theories and hearsay are unfortunately the rule and not the exception, but in general it should be considered bad practice to so plainly contradict conventional wisdom without giving a convincing reason to do so.
      - todayiamme 16y ago
        I think I read it in Scientific American.
tokenadult 16y ago
Mozart had a father who was a well practiced musician himself, and Mozart's father was an innovator in music education. Wolfgang Amadeus got an early start in studying music, and his dad was also relentless in promoting his career. A lot of people who may have had more "innate" talent didn't grow up with those environmental advantages.
rorymarinich 16y ago
No it's not. There's actually a lot of ongoing debate about what exactly we mean when we call somebody "the best" at making music. Every brand of music has its own series of ethos, and many of them actively disagree with many others. I love Mozart and think he was a brilliant writer of pop music — his work is very hook-driven and similarly repeats parts until they get stuck in your head — but I have friends who find his work too simplistic to take interest in. Then there's Beethoven, whose works disappoint my more technically-obsessed friends but are so gorgeously emotional. And on the other end of it you have the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols and Merzbow and a line of musicians who go for things Mozart never dreamed of pursuing. Brian Eno, pioneer of glam rock, pioneer of ambient music, one of the greatest living producers of music of all kinds, is actually very critical of classical music for this reason; he claims it bores him. He has a quote where he expresses skepticism for that kind of prodigious talent where he basically implies that any music so easy to make that you can be a prodigy at it isn't worthy of accolade: "Classical — perhaps I should say ‘orchestral’ — music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It’s all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities." Not that I entirely agree with him, either. But the point he's making is that it's stupid for us to make these assumptions that there's such a thing as "better" or "worse" music other than what we subjectively like and dislike. In my opinion, Mozart is very, very, very good; I might even decide he's great as I continue to listen to him. But somebody else can call him shit, and I have no way to argue that they're objectively wrong. (Unless they say he's uneducated, or incompetent, because competence can be objectively argued.)

binarysoul 16y ago

Let me ask, what were you doing at age 4? IIRC 4 year olds have a lot of free time (to practice etc...)

PakG1 16y ago
Wow, you serious? You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just because they have a lot of time to practice? I think it'd be better to ask for a scientific study on the subject for 4 year olds, except finding an acceptable sample size would be nigh impossible.
- joeyo 16y ago
  > You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just > because they have a lot of time to practice? Honestly, it's a pretty reasonable hypothesis. That's not to say that narrow-minded focus and incessant practice on a single skill at such a young age (or any age) produces a balanced or happy individual, but I have no problem believing that it would produce someone with skills far in excess of 99% of their peers.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    There is obviously a natural advantage to people with a keen sense of hearing. The ability to differentiate tones, etc. However, I spent a lot of my teenage years playing bass guitar with no musical training (literally zero, I have no formal musical lessons to my name) and I learnt the ability to not only to decipher a songs bass music, but I was able to actual transcribe its tablature simply by ear - IE in many songs I could actually hear how the song was being played, not just the notes that were played. My high school music teacher literally described me as tone and pitch deaf and basically declared me a write-off. I received virtually no tutelage, in fact I believe I spent a large majority of that class outside the class from being kicked out. My only musical ability was to moderately hold a beat. I opted out of music classes, and my brother had an old amp and had one of his friends bass guitars over and showed me to play something basic. I bought a bass guitar and practiced an hour or so a day just fucking around and trying to play along with songs. My passion was always and still is writing. I spent much of my time writing video game reviews with my bass guitar strapped around my neck. 1/2 of my learning was simply keeping my instrument so close that it became my object of distraction. Of stories I've heard of child prodigy are largely along the lines of a parent practicing in front of a child and when the parent is out of the room the child attempts to imitate their parent and doesn't do half bad. On the subject of imitation I like to tell the story of my first golf swing. I was ~20, I'd never so much as held a golf club (a putter at crazy golf doesn't really count, 5ft vs 200 yards is a huge difference) before, but I've seen people golf all my life on TV and in real life from friends. I went to the driving range with my future-father-in-law and my future-brother-in-law, both knew I'd never really golfed but neither knew I'd never hit a golf ball in my life. I borrowed one of their drivers (thankfully my father-in-law is actually a left-handed golfer) and I figured no pressure, they expect I won't be good so just do it. I watched a few guys take swings and I did the same. I hit 250 yards (which is actually a semi-pro-range IIRC), and never looked back. I still regularly manage to get in the 230 range without any form of practice. I take a couple of trips to a driving range a year - if that. I didn't go this year and I don't expect my shot to be any under 200 when I go next year. Peoples greatest failure is in failing before trying. If you have a bad mental attitude you will never succeed no matter how naturally 'talented' you are. However, the least talented person will always succeed if they have a strong mental attitude and a whole heap of perseverance. There are a lot of fantastically talented and inspirational musicians out there who have failed miserably at what they could have been. A key example is Iggy Pop and the Stooges, who despite influencing countless musicians across almost a half-dozen decades, they never hit huge. Whilst KISS who basically everyone knows isn't the most musically talented band is ridiculously world famous, not because of talent but because of life-long hard work and not drug addled binges.
- edanm 16y ago
  Obviously this is only one study, but have you heard of László Polgár? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r He is the father of 3 chess prodigies. The interesting thing is, he decided very specifically to try and raise his children to be chess grandmasters, in an attempt to prove that geniuses can be made. Quote from his wiki article: "He is interested in the proper method of rearing children, believing that "geniuses are made, not born". Before he had any children, he wrote a book entitled Bring Up Genius!, and asked for a wife who would help him carry out the experiment. " Quote from the article on one of his daughters, who is the strongest female chess player in the world: "She and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age.[3] "Geniuses are made, not born," was László's thesis. He and his wife Klara educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

todayiamme 16y ago

I am afraid that mozart at the age of 4, more or less played the works of Bach et al. to audiences after 2 years of strict practice with his father. (He saw that his son had interest in music when he would patiently sit through his sister's lessons and then he started pushing him to see how far he could go) The Mozart we know didn't emerge until he was a teenager and he started composing at the grand old age of 13. Yes, he did have a talent, but perhaps that talent was the gift of accelerated learning. Not the gift of magical music.

cynicalkane 16y ago
I don't understand why you think this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-SzzhUtws&feature=fvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-SzzhUtws&feature=fvw
- todayiamme 16y ago
  No actually I read that his so called "compositions" at that age were heavily guided by his father and were merely modified improvisation of Bach/other pieces he was taught. The Mozart we know didn't emerge till a later age. By the way, I don't mind being wrong. So, let's figure out the truth and I'll email you, okay?
  - cynicalkane 16y ago
    Where did you read this? Musicology journal? Popular biography? Oprah Magazine? In academic musicology unsubstantiated theories and hearsay are unfortunately the rule and not the exception, but in general it should be considered bad practice to so plainly contradict conventional wisdom without giving a convincing reason to do so.
    - todayiamme 16y ago
      I think I read it in Scientific American.

tokenadult 16y ago

Mozart had a father who was a well practiced musician himself, and Mozart's father was an innovator in music education. Wolfgang Amadeus got an early start in studying music, and his dad was also relentless in promoting his career. A lot of people who may have had more "innate" talent didn't grow up with those environmental advantages.

rorymarinich 16y ago

No it's not. There's actually a lot of ongoing debate about what exactly we mean when we call somebody "the best" at making music. Every brand of music has its own series of ethos, and many of them actively disagree with many others. I love Mozart and think he was a brilliant writer of pop music — his work is very hook-driven and similarly repeats parts until they get stuck in your head — but I have friends who find his work too simplistic to take interest in. Then there's Beethoven, whose works disappoint my more technically-obsessed friends but are so gorgeously emotional. And on the other end of it you have the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols and Merzbow and a line of musicians who go for things Mozart never dreamed of pursuing. Brian Eno, pioneer of glam rock, pioneer of ambient music, one of the greatest living producers of music of all kinds, is actually very critical of classical music for this reason; he claims it bores him. He has a quote where he expresses skepticism for that kind of prodigious talent where he basically implies that any music so easy to make that you can be a prodigy at it isn't worthy of accolade: "Classical — perhaps I should say ‘orchestral’ — music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It’s all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities." Not that I entirely agree with him, either. But the point he's making is that it's stupid for us to make these assumptions that there's such a thing as "better" or "worse" music other than what we subjectively like and dislike. In my opinion, Mozart is very, very, very good; I might even decide he's great as I continue to listen to him. But somebody else can call him shit, and I have no way to argue that they're objectively wrong. (Unless they say he's uneducated, or incompetent, because competence can be objectively argued.)