REVISING AMADEUS

Alex Ross writes in a New Yorker article on Mozart that recent scholars have determined the child prodigy was a hardworking, driven composer, not at all like the Mozart protrayed in the film Amadeus, wherein he's seen effortlessly writing first and final drafts of his music. To quote Mr. Ross,

"Scholars have also demolished the old idea that Mozart was an idiot savant, transcribing the music that played in his brain. Instead, he seems to have refined his ideas to an almost manic degree. Examination of Mozart’s surviving sketches and drafts—Constanze threw many sketches away—reveals that the composer sometimes began a piece, set it aside, and resumed it months or years later; rewrote troubling sections several times in a row; started movements from scratch when a first attempt failed to satisfy; and waited to finish an aria until a singer had tried out the opening."

If Mozart wasn't an idiot savant, then no one was or ever will be as far as art is concerned. I'm not denying Mozart's musical talents, but I believe that many others out there have had/are having/wll have the equivalent of Mozart's talent. What they don't have is his enthusiasm, his passion for his work. And no, you can't will yourself to be Mozart even if you match his talent. The desire to be a great artist is not the same as the desire to create great art. The former has much to do with ego, while the latter knows of nothing but the work at hand, will create for the sake of creating, will create even if it's possible no one will ever experience this work of art, will create even if it's possible that the creation will never be completed.

Then there's that Shakespeare fellow, who claimed never to have blotted out a line in his life, at least according to John Aubrey's seventeenth century jottings. Though whether Shakespeare ever made this claim is irrelevant, as it's well known that Shakespeare wrote none of the plays attributed to him. (The plays were in fact written by an infinite set of monkeys working under less than ideal conditions in a workhouse near Bristol.)

WHO HAS TALENT? WELL, WHO DOESN"T?

According to Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling On Happiness, studies show that most people consider themselves above average in most everything they do (and consider themselves less-biased too). He does add that people tend to rate themselves as worse than others when having to perform a difficult task, (juggling and playing chess are his examples). In Gilbert's words, "We don't always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique."

Which brings me to talent. Doesn't everyone think they have some talent? Many will claim to have it in at least one of the arts. I happen to think that most people do have some sort of artistic talent. What has prevented most people from developing their talent has been a lack of enthusiasm, which is no failure unless you're trying to earn a living as an artist. The talent differences among individuals is rather slight, but some have an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm and desire, which results in the development of that talent. I don't intend this to mean that you can be whatever you want to be. Unfortunately we don't get to choose our enthusiasms either, and therein lives the wide gap between a handful of humans and everyone else. In short, Mozart's enthusiasm is rarer than his talent. More on this later.

HELLO THERE

This blog is a chronicle of music (all kinds, but generally in this order: rock and its roots and offspring, classical, jazz), literature (not necessarily just the good stuff), the creative process (how does it happen? why does it happen?), and, occasionally, where does gender come into play in all this. So here it goes. I could be reading Proust, but instead I'm blogging.