In the early 1980’s a young boy from Prince George, BC used to listen to his older sister practice Suzuki violin until late into the night. At age six, despite being surrounded by music, he preferred to spend his free time playing street hockey. His parents had to ring a special dinner bell so that he would come home for dinner.
But by the time he was seven, something clicked. He decided to trade in his hockey stick for a violin, and thanks to his older sister, he already knew most of the Suzuki tunes from listening to her run through them night after night.
It wasn’t long before he was being called a prodigy, landing him in nearby Victoria to study with the great violinist, Sydney Humphreys. He progressed rapidly, and by 1995, moved to Montreal to attend McGill University under Israeli-born violin virtuoso, Yehonatan Berick.
At the time, he was doubtful of his prospects as a professional musician, but life was about to make the decision for him. The young unlikely, who bears a striking resemblance to hockey legend Sidney Crosby, won the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) competition in 1996. Jaws dropped at this rapid success.
The next year he performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra under Sir Yehudi Menuhin, who was so impressed with his tone, invited him again the following year. He won a Doris Schine Maxwell Scholarship at the Ravinia Festival in 1996 and 1997. Things were moving along for the young BC-born virtuoso. And to the surprise of many, including himself, the OSM made him Concertmaster, earning him the honour of being the youngest concertmaster in North America. His name is Jonathan Crow.
In the world of classical music, we hear a lot about talent. We even have special words like “wunderkind”, which imply a particularly young talent (our favorite). Juvenile stars are the most prized performers in the world and are thought to possess unworldly abilities. What seems impressive in adults, seems totally miraculous in children.
Crow’s ascent to the heights of the classical music world is a familiar story: the young man from a small town suddenly takes the music world by storm. But his success was far from sudden. From as early as he can remember, the violin was ever present in his life. After the age of six, his play and social life revolved around playing the violin. By the time he graduated from university, he had been playing for over 15 years.
The lesson is that talent, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity. As a culture, we typically associate it with the sparkle and naïve brilliance of youth.
Mozart wrote his first opera Apollo et Hyacinthus at age 11. The great surrealist poet, Arthur Rimbaud, wrote all of his books before the age of 21. Shostakovich wrote his first Symphony at the age of 18. Hemingway was 27 when he revolutionized minimalist fiction with The Sun Also Rises. Orson Welles, arguably one of the best filmmakers in history, made Citizen Kane at 25.
There is something interesting about youthful talent. It quickly taps into our wonderment, but on its own, it is not as important as people think. The popular perception of Mozart as genius was largely a social construct that had little to do with his music. It was only after he died that the stories arose about Mozart’s innate talent and a seemingly effortless stream of brilliance.
But what is “genius,” and how it relate to talent? One aspect of youthful talent is the hope for a future genius to emerge. History is littered with a slew of geniuses that seemed to show very little talent at a young age. Leos Janáček was 62 by the time his career got up to speed. Elliott Carter studied English and math at Harvard before he started taking composition seriously in middle age. Jazz great Thelonious Monk didn’t release his first album until he was 39. This seems to suggest that talent and genius are subtly different.
Talent is instantly recognizable, where genius is often misunderstood. People often have no idea what to make of original genius, and it takes years, sometimes generations to figure out what they were up to.
People sometimes describe a composer as a major talent, but the truth is there are no historically important composers who didn’t show original genius. Composers like Beethoven and Mozart had the courage to compose music in a style that was never heard before. If we look at Nadia Boulanger protege Philip Glass, who some in the media charged with wasting his musical ability on repetitive minimalism, he was born to originate it. Love him or hate him, that is Glass’ genius.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believed that true genius was about a tenacious unwillingness to strive for goals everyone else accepts. David Stabler echos, “A genius is not merely brilliant, skillful, masterly, sometimes dazzling; he is miraculous, in the sense that his presence cannot be predicted, explained, or accounted for (at least thus far) by natural laws or scientific study.”
American writer Jack Kerouac questioned how a “perfect virtuoso” can interpret Brahms on the violin yet be called a “genius” in the same breath. “The genius, the originating force, really belongs to Brahms; the violin virtuoso is simply a talented interpreter…”
American composer Nico Muhly (another noted wunderkind) said in an interview with Vogue, “There was a period of time when musicians were employed by the court or the church. You churn out a certain number of minutes of music a week. We got away from that in the nineteenth century — all of a sudden, the composer is this brilliant genius separate from the world. It’s totally ridiculous — it’s a job.”
The romantic association of talent seemed to have come to the extreme with the term “genius”.
While we still seem to associate performers with talent, we are more inclined to use the term genius with composers. This seems to correlate with Schopenhauer’s view that talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
Albert Einstein had a different view: everybody is a genius. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
This perspective is about the potential for genius, but to find our essence and to unleash our potential is for many of us, is a lifetime’s challenge. And that’s where mindset comes in. It takes courage and involves risk, yet the payoff for ourselves (and the world) is enormous.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
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