Dueling violin prodigies playing Winter in Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons
Christian Li is fourteen years old here. This seems to be a rehearsal. I love the way prodigies get a very adult and focused look on their faces when they play. His delivery is very fast, with lots of attack. Too fast for my taste, though. I think it’s impressive but that it sacrifices a bit of tone:
Chloe Chua is eleven years old here. The first piece she plays in this video is modern. I don’t like it that much but I left it in because she performs it so very well. The Vivaldi “Winter” starts around 5:51, and the video shows more of it than the previous clip does:
Musical prodigies such as these seem almost otherworldly to me.
Here is a list (yes, it includes Liszt!) of 25 musical child prodigies, composers as well as instrumentalists and vocalists. Just one example: Camille Saint-Saëns wrote his first piece at age 3; it is now in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. He made his concert debut as an organist at age 10. Anyway, it’s quite a collection of child prodigies from the eighteenth century up through the present.
https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/pictures/composer/classical-musics-child-prodigies/
I’ve read that there are 3 fields of endeavor in which prodigies sometimes manifest themselves:
1) music
2) mathematics
3) chess
All three seem to involve and innate appreciation for patterns. Presumably games other than chess might see this too.
I’m not a big fan of Bach (with the exception of “Air on the String of G”, which I find of ineffable beauty) but that he was also a musical prodigy is IMO, undeniable. Reportedly able to fluently play every instrument in the Orchestra, when questioned as to how he could possibly do so, he reportedly replied, “it’s simple really, you just put the right finger, in the right place, at the right time…”
If that doesn’t qualify for “otherworldly”, I don’t know what does…
All three seem to involve and innate appreciation for patterns.
–JimNorCal
True.
I’m impressed too with language prodigies — those who master multiple languages as children, like James Stuart Mill:
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Mill was a notably precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography. At the age of three he was taught Greek.[17] By the age of eight, he had read Aesop’s Fables, Xenophon’s Anabasis,[17] and the whole of Herodotus,[17] and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato.[17] He had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy.
At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study and compose poetry. One of his earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he also enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
__________________________________
There are a few writers who wrote great works in their teens, but not earlier to my knowledge.
Dylan Thomas wrote some of his greatest poems, such as my favorite, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse,” when he was nineteen.
The theory goes that writing requires significant real life experience, while math, music and chess don’t.
Heaps better than the Bee Gees.
John Guilfoyle:
Totally different genres. The Bee Gees were geniuses – as well as child prodigies – in their genre. And they composed, arranged, played instruments, and sang.
Without ever taking lessons.
Tomato – tomahto.
😉
Why is the canon of Western Music now played best by Asian prodigies? This is not a riddle; I have no answer, but merely pose the question.
The entire issues of prodigies raises the question that within each human endeavor there is, to me, always an element of “talent”. This is what the left educational establishment tries extremely hard to deny. I have NO ability whatsoever regarding the visual arts. I’m a complete buffoon in that regard. As we move forward in our house design all the visual component decisions are rightfully made by my wife and daughter. I have some small ability musically, but I work every day trying to improve my guitar playing. And given my career, I do have some “talent” in dealing with physical systems and advanced mathematics.
The Left/educational establishment thinks everyone is the same and have the same innate talents, and all results are the product of racism.
Steve raises a great question. Nature or nuture? I tend to go with “Both!” To deny some rather obvious facts such as the NBA, asian music/mathematics prodigies, etc etc, is to ultimately deny each person a path which best utilizes their ability. All in favor of a so-called “equitable society”.
Steve (retired lawyer);
I have always wondered about that; Asians – and not just prodigies – attracted to Western Classical music.
Check out the members of major orchestras in the USA or Europe; you will find many are Asians.
Also, many Asian nations (Peking, Tokyo, Manila, Hanoi, Bangkok, etc) have orchestras that perform Western Classical music.
It’s interesting to speculate why this has occurred.
JohnTyler et alia,
Because Western Classical music is awesome! And those driven to be the best in their field aspire to what is most sublime, challenging and beautiful.
Because Western Classical music is awesome! And those driven to be the best in their field aspire to what is most sublime, challenging and beautiful.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Well, yes.
Credit where credit is due, Asians have their home team favorites, but when the West hits home runs in science and culture, Asians have paid attention.
They also like the serious discipline the crown jewels of Western Civilization require, even if we, for the historical moment, seem to have forgotten.
It’s been a two-way exchange. Western art and spirituality have drawn clearly on Asian sources in the past century or two.
Now that Covid is drawing to a close, I look forward to returning my local Zendo for meditation. Call me an old fuddy-duddy but Zoom Zen meditation just doesn’t make it.
Most such get exceptionally burnt out before they are 25, though.
This works fine in places where youth is essential — sports like tennis or gymnastics where age becomes a major hindrance due to loss of speed and precision that comes with age.
Violin is not, however — you’d generally be better off having yourself peak at about 20 or so, because then you’ll retain your interest for far longer, and use your talent for 30,40, or even 50 years.
}}} 7. Bizet
The minimum age of entry for the Paris Conservatoire was ten years old. Even that sounds pretty young, but Georges Bizet’s parents were so sure of his musical genius that they sent him there before he even hit his tenth birthday.
One wonders how many kids he had. Because… let’s face it. One would expect him to know as much as anyone how to get… Bizet. 😀
How many of those violin players in support are feeling like Salieri in Amadeus?
😛
They can see the kids have extreme talent, and there is no doubt of it… but here they are having spent decades getting to where they are and here is this kid @ 11 or 14 going, “Hey, grampa, here’s how you do it!”
😀
}}} I’m impressed too with language prodigies — those who master multiple languages as children, like James Stuart Mill:
Yes, but this is probably possible for lots and lots of kids. Children have all the mechanisms for picking up multiple languages early on, their brains are truly primed for it. I would lay odds Mill is/was not so much a prodigy as much as one of many who could do the same, were they only exposed to the languages early on. Not saying he was not awesome, but suspecting perhaps more like 1 in 100 or 1,000 than 1 in 1,000,000.
If I had had children, I would have gone way out of my way to make sure they had at least 3 steady language exposures before they were 7, preferably Chinese and one European language, just because Chinese is such a radically different language type, as a tonal language.
It would no doubt have been an issue, as it would have meant my kids could carry on conversations I would not be able to understand in my presence. Never a good thing for parents. 😛
}}} Why is the canon of Western Music now played best by Asian prodigies? This is not a riddle; I have no answer, but merely pose the question.
Probably because Asian mothers do a very similar job as Jewish mothers used to, they push their kids to excel.
This is something today’s parents, too focused on being “cool friends” cannot manage.
There is such a thing as “too much”, but we seriously don’t push our kids enough.
To excel means drawing attention to yourself, and that is not something which the Hoi Polloi are meant to do.
P.S., thanks, Neo. I love The Four Seasons… it ranks up there with the best of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven for awesomeness.
OBloody Hell on February 28, 2022 at 6:29 am
I was wondering the same thing.
You don’t want to deny the child their opportunity to achieve excellence at a young age, but need to mentally treat them as adults even when they are under 8 or 10 or 12 years old.
If our brains really contain multiple minds, then some of them might well mature at a faster rate than the rest, whatever the skill(s) or capabilities they support. Whether that can happen solely from genetics, or requires further nurture is still a wide open discussion. But apparently most children turn out as they do in spite of whatever the parents try to do while rearing them [granting there must be special case exceptions].