Music: Prodigies

It has become the fashion to sneer at musical child prodigies. The market has been drugged with them. It has been said that the child prodigy grows up into a mediocrity, that such precocity is unhealthy, etc. Of course, most prodigies do not turn out geniuses in maturity, or the world would be flooded with geniuses, which it is not. But little mention has been made of the remarkable extent to which great musicians have been infant prodigies, as almost all have been.

Mephisto, sagacious commentator in Musical America, drew forth a few reminders:

Josef Hofmann was a European sensation and attracted the attention of Rubinstein before the age of seven; had a sensational debut at the Metropolitan when nine.

Fritz Kreisler, at ten, won a gold medal at the Vienna Conservatory; at twelve, took the Paris Prix de Rome.

Verdi, at 15, had composed a symphony.

Beethoven’s genius, evident when he was five, flourished before he was twelve.

At four, Mozart played the clavichord and wrote compositions still extant. At nine, his symphonies were played in London, he published six sonatas. At eleven, Mozart conducted his own court concerts at Vienna.