Child Prodigy

Visited my piano teacher yesterday and had a great time talking about life and recounting the good old days. She told me this great story about S, an incredible 13-year old prodigy, who came into her life a year ago.

S's musical abilities are truly amazing. I've seen him in perform 4 of the Chopin Op.25 etudes and technically they pose no challenge for him. According to my teacher, he has yet to be challenged by any repertoire, and he has no preconceived idea of the difficulty of the pieces he is tackling ("Oh I learnt the Hammerklavier sonata last week, do you want to hear it?"). S also learns phenomenally quickly, bringing more material to the lesson than can be played in his hour's lesson. However his immense talent is coupled with one of the most bizzare home environments you'd ever see.

S doesn't go to school. His parents took him out of primary school after one day, claiming that it was too stressful for their son. As a result to this day, he only knows rudimentary math and has horrendous spelling. He lives disconnected from the rest of the world, with no TV or newspapers at home, and no friends either. Six times a week, his family goes to walk their nine dogs, which they keep at his father's workplace. Every weekday, he works from 9-6.30, practising piano mostly and a little math and english.

So how did S get involved in music? His mother knows nothing about music, while his dad knows a few chords on the guitar. When S was 7, his dad taught him a few chords on the guitar, and before long, being the precocious talent that he was, he learnt other chords and could improvise. When he was brought to the store to purchase a guitar, he started playing and drew a crowd, as well as the attention of one of the teachers in the in-store music school. However, this teacher looked the hippy sort, with pony-tailed hair and goatee, and asked him to come down to jam with him some time. His mother, fearing the bad influence of the hippy guitarist, pulled him out of the shop, and that was it - the end of learning the guitar. "No more guitar," she declared, "You'll learn the piano", since well, most piano teachers are decent-looking females.

Unfortunately, since S's parents knew next to nothing about music, they didn't manage to get S a good teacher. In fact, S's first teacher exploited his parents lack of knowledge by selling him second hand books at first hand prices (the last copy, the teacher claimed, which prompted his mother to ask my teacher why music stores only had one copy of every book) and budget naxos cds at full prices. Before long, the parents realised that something wasn't right and decided that he needed someone more reliable and trustworthy. Fortunately, his teacher also thought it would be best for him to go to someone else after his grade 8.

My teacher was very apprehensive to accept him as a student initially. At that stage of her career, she had moved on to handling music teachers who needed to upgrade their skills. Her days of handling talented kids were past her. Also, she was afraid that the parents were the pressurising sort, expecting him to pass exams and win competitions. So she asked the parents to call back a year later, after he had done his grade 8. A year later, exactly to the day, S's mother called again, taking my teacher by surprise. This time my teacher accepted him, but nothing in her years of experience quite prepared her for this student.

It was immediately apparent that S was phenomenally gifted. However the initial years of poor instruction had hampered his musical development. "Incredibly talented, but sounds like Richard Clayderman," my teacher noted. He also knew nothing about music beyond what he had been exposed to. Before he came to my teacher, he had never been for a concert, and never seen an orchestra in his life. Upon watching a dvd of an orchestral concert, he was puzzled why the man standing in front of the musicians was pointing the stick angrily at everyone. I wonder what he'd say when he sees ballet for the first time. On bringing him for his first concert, my teacher was amused to find him carrying a huge bag with a bottle of water, a bottle of tea, packets of sour plums, and many tubes of sweets - "you're not going to malaysia!" she remarked.

My teacher accepted S because she couldn't bear to see him being exploited. Exploited because his parents haven't a clue what to do with his talent. And exploited by teachers who would ride on his talents to make a name for themselves. And further exploited by the world as a whole, which is so out of sync with his simple, innocent world (when asked if he wanted to watch tv while waiting for his dad to pick him up, he didn't even glance at what was on the tv and asked if he could practise instead). And so now my teacher has a god-son in her hands, as his parents place his future in her hands. But nuturing the gifts of the prodigy is an art in itself. Push too hard, and he'll burn out. What about his emotional development?

So what my teacher has done is to try to provide for a broad musical education - throwing repertoire at him, which he devours at incredible speed, arranging for theory and composition lessons. The next step is to find a music institution with the right environment for his development, and to ease his transition into the world as we know it. She worries that without formal education, it might be difficult be admitted, since the good schools all require some basic linguistic and mathematical skills. She worries whether he'll cope emotionally in a distant country alone. She worries that people will try to exploit him again. And what about NS?

To succeed in the world of classical music, where prodigies are abound, raw talent simply isn't enough. Sheer grit, financial savvy, emotional maturity and luck are some of the other factors that come into play, as with most things in life. I know a few people who left when they were young to study music in a foreign land. They were considered to be the most talented child prodigies in their day, but the wow factor wears off after a while, and soon they are assessed, under a more subjective and less accomodating lens, as professional musicians. These very people are either trying to find a job, or have moved on to other vocations. S is argubly more talented than anyone else I've seen, but it really remains to be seen if he'll make it to the big league.

Another thing that the story has led me wondering is whether we should let geniuses live in their own world, or should we rein them in and bring them back in sync with the rest of us. I ask this because S is obviously not the typical 13 year old, and he inhabits a world of music, almost completely out of touch with reality. And to live like that could be potentially disastrous for his emotional health in the future. But then again, perhaps exceptional geniuses are meant to lead exceptional lifestyles.