Wolfgang Mozart was composing music at five years old. By eight, he was giving public performances as a violinist and a pianist. Before his death at age 35, he produced some of the most renowned music that has ever existed. Mozart was just naturally talented, right? Born to write and play music? A prodigy of the highest order, of course?
Actually, not really. In fact, from a modern view, he was only about twice as good as an average student.
Recent scholarship has put his abilities as a prodigy performer in a new perspective. Researches constructed a precocity index for pianists. They figured out the number of years needed by pianist under modern training programs before publicly performing various works, and then compared that with the number of years actually needed by several prodigies throughout history. If the average student needs six years of preparation before publicly playing a piece, and a given prodigy did it after three years, that student would have an index of 200%. Mozart’s index was around 130%. Clearly ahead of average students, but 20th century prodigies score 300-500%.
– Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated
You could say his success started at birth though.
Wolfgang’s father was Leopold Mozart, a highly accomplished music teacher, and a decent musician and composer in his own right, who started Wolfgang’s intensive training in composing and performing at age three. Bye age eight, Wolfgang had written a few brief symphonies, which hewed closely to the style of Johan Christian Bach, who he had been studying with when they were written. By eleven, Wolfgang had composed his first four piano concertos, though they didn’t contain any original music. None of this early work is regarded as particularly great, and they are almost never played today.
In fact, Wolfgang’s first world class piece of original music is his Piano Concerto No. 9, which wasn’t written until he was 21. While 21 is certainly young, this piece of music wasn’t produced until Wolfgang was already 18 rigorous years into his training. Sort of odd for someone considered the go to example for natural born talent, isn’t it?
And that’s the rub. The more we dig into the lives of prodigies like Mozart, or Talent is Overrated. I’d definitely recommend the book if you’re interested in deliberate practice, or just want to hear more fascinating stories about how interesting people accomplished what they did.
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Hmm. Although I cannot disagree that the circumstances surrounding Mozart are of great interest to many people, I would like to kindly note that Mozart was forced to downplay his abilities to cater to the Salzburg court, as well as the church, of which he was employee. It was not until after he broke away from his fathers loving (but tyrannical) oppression that he was free to fulfill his hearts ambition. It was two years later that he created one of the greatest masterpieces of all time.