in India - his IQ is 146 points. The boy was interested in medicine from early childhood, having an excellent understanding of anatomy from the age of five. He performed his first operation at the age of seven, restoring the mobility of the fingers of a neighbor girl - she could not unclench her fist after a severe burn, and her parents did not have enough money for a real doctor. As a teenager, Akrit entered medical university, becoming the youngest student in its history. Now the brilliant Indian is about 20 years old, and he is directing his energies to finding a cure for cancer.
Preys on the vanity, ignorance or loneliness of people, gaining trust and betraying them without remorse. This is why it is wrong to write one of the children. When journalists betray their subjects, at least they are adults; they do not need protection from the world and themselves. Good journalists for major publications, spending time profiling prodigies in classical music, even pieces they never achieved immortal writing status, speak to the collective psyche of our genre.
There are curses in every field. But since the days of Leopold Mozart, who dragged his son through the drawing rooms of European nobility like a trained monkey, the prodigal boy has become a familiar, idiosyncratic trope in classical musical hagiography. This might be a possibility: the restrictions on what can be ethically described about a phenomenally talented child mean that there is more scope for thinking about society, its expectations, its projections, its needs. Nicholas Wroe briefly engages with the darker side of the prodigies' reception in his play, writing that they "have attracted the attention of a wider public, known for the horror stories of burnout that can surround them like their gifts."
Akrit Yaswal: Child Surgeon
2. Pablo Picasso: draw before you speak.
The most famous artist of the last century, the founder of Cubism, Pablo Picasso began drawing almost in infancy, even before he learned to speak. Already at the age of 12 he was considered an accomplished master with an individual style. He passed the art school exams in one day, while other applicants needed a month to complete this work. The young Picasso's first exhibition took place when he was 16 years old, and by the age of 20 he had already gained worldwide fame. During his life he created more than 20 thousand works. His paintings are valued at tens of millions of dollars each. But for all his achievements in the artistic field, Pablo for a long time experienced difficulties with learning: reading and writing did not want to be given to such a creative person.
The text itself becomes an artifact of this “passionate attention.” "There was much astonishment at the London concert at Deutscher's level and skill," writes Wroe. He doesn't mention what the exact markers of these traits are. Do they meet through her well mannered appearance or the satisfying incongruity of a child confidently entering the adult realm? In violinist Christian Tetslaff says: I understand why people are surprised by a 10-year-old juggler in the circus. But in music it's not about ability.
Of course, at least on some level, classical music is about the skill or mastery of a craft. The assessment must be learned, the technique internalized. There are clear rules of harmony, structure and form. With practice and the ability to imitate, these are things that a talented child can master. Additionally, if a 40-year-old player is playing, then the chance is much higher than he actually experienced what he is trying to connect with.
3. Okita Souji: The invincible child.
Okita Soji lived in 19th century Japan and was not noted for great intelligence or creativity. His genius lay elsewhere - by the age of 12 he had become an invincible fencer, having perfectly mastered several types of bladed weapons. He was officially recognized as a martial arts master at the age of 18. This legendary young man is one of the founders of the Shinsengumi military police, the stories of which are still paid attention to by Japanese cinema and comic book creators.
Do musicians need to at least begin to live a full life, experience love, loss and loneliness before this message can happen? In his study of families and diversity, away from the tree, Andrew Solomon quotes pianist Leon Fleischer, who agrees with Tetcluff: You can either perform the piece as if you were in the middle of what is happening, or as a storyteller. This frees the listener's imagination. A child prodigy cannot do this, but a fully developed performer can.
Renowned journalist Uwe Jean Heuser asks: “Who is this child who, at the age of 10, is able to surprise an ambitious, knowledgeable audience?” Isn't the real question: Who is this audience that allows itself to be surprised by a child? Is "ambitious" or "knowledgeable" really the right way describe an audience that is satisfied with "poise and skill" when they should expect to communicate with life experience, storytelling, expression? Are these qualities much more difficult to judge in musicians?
4. Kim Ung Yong: Genius from Korea
Korean Kim Ung Yong, born in 1962, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most smart person of the living - his IQ is 210 points. At the age of three he entered the university at the physics department and graduated at six. When he was seven years old, he was invited to America to work for NASA. By the age of 15, the young man received a doctorate from the University of Colorado. At 16, he returned to South Korea where he completed another doctorate in civil engineering and construction. After that, he refused an offer of cooperation with the best university in the country, preferring to work at a university in a small town, where he still works. He talked with Mikhail Gorbachev and Bill Clinton, and also gave a speech at a meeting of the UN Council. From the age of 12, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times. Now the young man is 23 years old, and his career is clearly just beginning.
Geniuses from the cradle
As Solomon writes: “Musical prodigies are sometimes compared to child actors, but child actors portray children; no one pays to see six years of Hamlet play.” The critic, the impresario, the old man, the businessman, the piano teacher, the young girl, the officer, the critic and even other children - their legs hanging precariously from their chairs and their shining eyes looking at their gifted little one dressed in white contemporary.
Mann continues. And the applause burst forth, unanimously, enthusiastically; the child made his modest little girlish curtsy, and the people in the front seat thought: Look how thin his little thighs are! Wait, let me take off my gloves - what a devil he is! In Solomon's book, pianist Mitsuko Uchida calls classical music's love affair with child prodigies a "bewildering preoccupation." She adds: “Ask those viewers how they would like to be represented in court by a seven-year-old; let them try the operation on a very gifted eight-year-old.”
7. William James Sidis: The greatest genius in history.
He is considered the smartest person who has ever lived on our planet. His level of intellectual development is estimated at approximately 250-300 points (despite the fact that the maximum value that can be scored on modern tests is 180 points). William was born in the USA in 1898 into a family of Jewish emigrants from Ukraine. Learned to read at one and a half years old, mastered seven by eight foreign languages(more precisely, six - he invented the seventh himself) and wrote four books. At seven he passed the exams for Harvard Medical School, but due to his age he was accepted there only four years later, after numerous demands from his father. Sidis received his professorship before his twentieth birthday. In his life he mastered more than forty languages and wrote a number of outstanding works on mathematics and cosmology.
True, the stakes for spectators are lower at a concert. But it also doesn't seem like audiences simply take music any less seriously than other fields. So what makes play special to a child? Is it a sense of magic or a feeling that perhaps a higher power exists and bestows talent on a chosen few? Is this a trace of roads not taken in our own lives, or a manifestation of the seemingly immediate mastery of skills that most people need to learn? Is this a victory over nature, like the tamed tiger in Siegfried and Roy?
To be able to juggle, all you need is excellent physical coordination. The spectacle of a child playing a Scarlatti sonata, moreover, can be seen as a kind of acculturation to a certain Western tradition. A child playing music for adults performs adult emotions. She is focused and well dressed, not wild and stupid. Perhaps what really captivates viewers is simply that the prodigy seems to have been raised so well. Perhaps we think that high culture really makes people better people.
But genius weighed on him. William led a reclusive life, avoided communication with the opposite sex and the press, worked in ordinary positions, changing jobs as soon as people around him began to suspect his abilities.
Alma Deutscher's world is one where Victorian virtue is exciting and conformity is sweet. Her first opera premiere took place last year. "As a composer, she is extraordinarily gifted," he writes. But what exactly is she writing? "The music is unforgettably beautiful, drawing heavily on the simplicity and spontaneity of the 18th-century galante style," says Wroe, and Deutscher himself adds that "when the harmony is very inconsistent, I just don't like it."
Mozart and others
Deutscher studies at home, although “not for ideological reasons.” She can learn at her own pace and play with her ever-present jump rope, which also helps free her head for musical inspiration. Morning and late evening are dedicated to music. Deutscher's talent is sensational. But when a child spends hours every day studying music, is it really a miracle that she can write it? “No discipline has ever been permanently transformed by childhood revelation,” writes Solomon, and quotes conductor Leon Bostein, who says: “The Prodigy confirms received wisdom; they never change it.”
Nature - this inventor is constantly experimenting in her desire to make the species Homo Sapiens more perfect, and all imaginable and inconceivable techniques are used. The victims of these experiments, endowed with a non-standard view of the world, are called geniuses. Giftedness is nothing more than a deviation, an irregularity in mental development and brain structure. This is why geniuses pay an incredibly high price for their gift. These loners make progress, thinking originally, formulating truths inaccessible to ordinary reason, but they also pay for their genius. They pay with loneliness, instability, illness and early deaths. Very often genius manifests itself in childhood. The great Mozart wrote music and performed concerts from the age of three. At the age of 11, A. S. Griboyedov entered Moscow University, and at the age of 13, the outstanding physicist L. D. Landau became a student. But these are examples of accomplished people; more often the fate of child prodigies turns out to be sad and tragic.
In this case, it seems that the conventional wisdom is that classical music should still sound like Mozart or early Schubert. If it happens to be called a symphony, sonata or oprah, so much the better. When a child's early playful games and musical experiments become works and incite adjectives such as "genius" and "creative", doesn't it invite unfair comparisons? Aren't we setting them up for failure?
Music critic Janice Nimura takes an even more cynical view of our fascination with child prodigies. She tells Solomon: A prodigy is a polite version of a freak. Looking at the dog boy in the outside world is exploitative, but looking closely at the six-year-old pianist on the Today show is somehow good, even inspiring, demonstrating just how high human potential can soar.
Child prodigies in Russia - examples
In February 2011, 18-year-old Sergei Reznichenko committed suicide by jumping out of a window. This young phenomenon learned to read at the age of three, and to count even earlier - at two.
By the age of seven, he knew the periodic table and read L. N. Tolstoy’s four-volume epic “War and Peace.” Studying at school turned out to be a cakewalk for him. Sergei spoke several languages and was a winner of many Olympiads in a variety of subjects.
Christian Tetslaff says: I mention this when people ask me because it is a very important topic for young people. Thousands of children end up being burned and don't become musicians because they can't survive. This may seem nicer than working in a factory, but it is an incredible level of emotional stress for something that should truly represent freedom and expanding horizons.
And then there are complications: as adults, can we ever go back to what we would like as children? It is impossible to judge how other people raise their children: at what point passions become forced, how much to challenge a child, how to support him in a way that makes him healthy, humble but confident. Deutscher is described as a dreamy girl, playing with her rope and relaxing in imaginary games involving music, without the leveling, constricting restrictions of school.
Teachers were afraid to call the intellectual superman to the board, because his knowledge of the subject was more complete and deeper than the teacher’s. At the age of 15, the talented teenager became a university student and moved into a dormitory.
Possessing a phenomenal memory, here too he began to master new subjects with amazing ease. But it all ended suddenly and instantly.
The smartest person in the world is child prodigy Kim Ung-Yong
But her success speaks volumes about the world of classical music. She met and praised Simon Rattle, Annie-Sophie Mutter and Daniel Barenboim. She has a piano teacher in Switzerland and a composition teacher in Chicago. Telegraph headlines: "Meet Britain's Reluctant Heir to Mozart." She's been on the Today show and Ellen DeGeneres.
Heizer tells her she needs publicity and interviews, and she replies, “It’s part of the job.” How older child, the more critical the audience is. It is difficult to see a child exposed to the prejudices and bitterness of the Internet, and its latent expectations of growth and tragic fall. Violinist Midori suffered from eating disorders and depression for 20 years. In his book, Solomon cites lesser-known child prodigies whose careers met tragic ends.
Reznichenko abruptly changed his lifestyle. Starting from the third year, the guy gave up on studying, began drinking, smoking, arguing with teachers, and being interested in girls. And then the troubles came all at once.
He lost a large sum on an online stock exchange, his relationship with his mother became strained, he was threatened with expulsion from the institute because of a failed exam, and finally, his beloved girlfriend left him.
The most famous child prodigies
We, as media audiences, agents, speakers, orchestras, have a responsibility to ensure that this does not go too far. There is a Japanese proverb that says: A prodigy at 10, a genius at 20, an ordinary person at 30. Let's hope that's what happens in the Deutscher case. After all, routine is often where true happiness is found. ¶.
While most of us struggle to get through school or at least some of the tougher subjects like math, there are child prodigies like Mozart who are captivating the world with their brilliant talents. While they are mesmerized by them for obvious reasons, we also ask ourselves: how can a ten-year-old person have the skills that normal person never get it in their entire life, no matter how hard they try?
Actually, the problems are quite everyday, many have encountered similar ones, and everything, in the end, ended well, but remember that a few paragraphs up we wrote about. (They pay with loneliness, instability, illness and early deaths).
The corpse of a boy who was confused in life, not yet getting to know it properly, was found by janitors at dawn under the dorm window.
Everyone in the Soviet Union knew the name of this girl. She was as popular as the cosmonauts, Alla Pugacheva or Sofia Rotaru.
The collection of poems “Draft,” which she published at the age of 9, was translated into 12 languages and sold thirty thousand copies. For comparison, today a circulation of three thousand is considered a huge success.
By the way, she started composing at the age of four. The collection was followed by an award at the Venice poetry festival, and a little later, at the age of 16, a nervous breakdown.
Nika was treated in Switzerland, was treated and lived in civil marriage with a professor who was 60 years older than her. But the treatment did not help, the young poetess returned to Moscow.
For the next ten years, Nika became more and more immersed in herself and drank and drank.
During another drinking session, the favorite of the Soviet people either accidentally fell from the windowsill, or deliberately stepped out of the window and flew, not up, but down.
Another hero of newspaper essays, the favorite and pride of the Soviet people. At the age of eight, the young genius solved a complex astronomical problem, the solution of which was highly praised by Academician A. N. Kolmogorov.
The future seemed wonderful. Pavlik published articles in the most popular scientific journal in the USSR, “Science and Life,” and at the age of 15 he entered Moscow University and studied in graduate school.
But the cruel nature of the young guy ended in failure this time. A talented young man ended up in a psychiatric hospital with a nervous breakdown.
A year before his thirtieth birthday, Pavel died.
Prodigies of the world
William was born at the end of the 19th century in New York. At eight years old, this indigo boy easily read books in eight languages. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sidis became the youngest student at Harvard.
His interests were surprisingly varied. It seemed that there was no area in which he was not an expert.
One after another, his books and articles on mathematics, history, anatomy, logistics and other areas of knowledge that are not related to each other are published.
At thirty years old, William James knows forty languages. So what next? Nothing!
At the age of 46, a genius dies, forgotten by everyone. This unique person worked all his life as a simple accountant and was terribly afraid of women and journalists.
So guess who it is - a real genius or another failed experiment of nature?
And finally, the biography for a young genius is atypical. Life is good! The very middle of the twentieth century. 1951 United States of America.
Kim is born with a whole bunch of congenital diseases, including cerebral hemispheres fused into a single piece and damage to the cerebellum.
This predetermined the genius of the experimental patient. At two and a half years old, this unique child learns to read, after which he cannot stop.
The home library, newspapers, magazines, and brochures that came to hand were “swallowed.” He perceived the text on the page immediately, and not line by line. But the most amazing thing is that I remembered everything I read forever.
He remembered hundreds of fiction and documentary books, and could play thousands of pieces of music from memory.
Fame came to the nugget when a portrait was copied from him for the film “Rain Man”, where the brilliant Dustin Hoffman played the prototype of Kim.
After the incredible success of the film, Kim, who, unlike Hoffman's character, did not suffer from autism, became an extremely popular personality all over the world.
He traveled around different countries with lectures, demonstrated his extraordinary talents. Unlike many prodigies, his abilities did not disappear over time, but only intensified. The “rain man” died of a heart attack at the age of 59.
