The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (36 page)

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American Journal of Psychology
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(2006).

    
His father, Leopold Mozart, was an intensely ambitious Austrian musician
.

Leopold’s book was published the year his son Wolfgang was born. (Sadie, ed.,
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music
, 1988.)

    
[Leopold] advocated the so-called “Geminiani grip
”:
November, “A French edition of Leopold Mozart’s
Violinschule
(1756).”

    
Then came Wolfgang
.
Four and a half years younger than his sister, the tiny boy got everything Nannerl got—only much earlier and even more intensively.

   There is a wonderful parallel with another family three centuries later—the three Polgar sisters in Hungary, all raised to be exceptional chess players. As each girl was exposed to chess earlier than her elder sister, she subsequently became the better player. The youngest, Judit, became the youngest grandmaster in history at age fifteen (at that time). (Shenk,
The Immortal Game
, p. 132.)

    
Literally from his infancy, he was the classic younger sibling soaking up his big sister’s singular passion
.
As soon as he was able, he sat beside her at the harpsichord and mimicked chords that she played.

   Nannerl later wrote: “He often spent much time at the clavier [keyboard], picking out thirds … and his pleasure showed it sounded good [to him].” (Zaslaw and Cowdery,
The Compleat Mozart
, p. 276.)

His sister also echoed her father’s words that Wolfgang was the beneficiary of a God-given talent, and that his abilities were apparent from very early on. This may seem to be in contradiction with my argument here. But neither the intense religiosity of the Mozart family nor the obvious precociousness of young Wolfgang refutes the notion of his genius being a matter of development.

    
Not only did Leopold openly give preferred attention to Wolfgang over his daughter; he also made a career-altering decision to more or less shrug off his official duties in order to build an even more promising career for his son
.

“Everything connected with his son’s career was of such importance that his official duties fell into the background.” pp. 401–4. (Geiringer, “Leopold Mozart,”.)

Also, Alfred Einstein writes:

Up to 1762, [Leopold’s] ambition to rise in Salzburg to the highest position had been thwarted by his superior, the Kapellmeister Johann Ernst Eberlin, who towered far above him as a creative musician, and whom he himself recognized as a pattern “of a thorough and finished master,” as an example of wonderful fertility and ease of production. But some months before Eberlin died (1762), Leopold had departed with his children on his second tour which, as a moral obligation and as a pecuniary speculation, he put far above
his official duties at Salzburg. (Alfred Einstein, preface to
A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing
. See also Stowell, “Leopold Mozart Revised,”, pp. 126–57, and November, “A French Edition of Leopold Mozart’s
Violinschule
[1756].”)

    
From the age of three, then, Wolfgang had an entire family driving him to excel with a powerful blend of instruction, encouragement, and constant practice
.

   Have we identified
every
explanation for the marvelous success of Leopold Mozart’s children? Of course not. This book does not pretend that there is a simple recipe for talent or presume to fully understand the dynamic that makes the children of some ambitious parents into amazingly skilled performers and others mediocre or disinterested players. The point here is that it is a dynamic process—not that we can track every single factor and interaction as it plays out.

    
today many young children exposed to Suzuki and other rigorous musical programs play as well as young Mozart did—and some play even better
:
Lehmann and Ericsson, “The Historical Development of Domains of Expertise,” pp. 67–94.

   Deconstructing the myth of Mozart’s early achievements, and understanding why they were so rare, does not make those achievements any less spectacular. It is a blessing for anyone, at any age, to be able to bring grace and beauty into other people’s lives. For a child to attain such poise and proficiency while his or her peers lark about on swings and fumble with toy instruments is truly something to behold.

That having been said, no one today would pay any attention to Mozart’s earliest years if he hadn’t gone on to develop into such a remarkable adult composer.

    
“When we say that someone is talented
”:
Levitin,
This Is Your Brain on Music
,.

    
Practice changes your body
.
Researchers have recorded a constellation of physical changes (occurring in direct response to practice) in the muscles, nerves, hearts, lungs, and brains of those showing profound increases in skill level in any domain.

Ericsson writes:

[There is] emerging evidence that extended focused practice has profound effects on, and can influence virtually every aspect of, the human body, such
as muscles, nerve systems, heart and circulatory system, and the brain. (Ericsson et al., eds.,
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
, p. 59.)

    
The brain drives the brawn
.
Even among athletes, changes in the brain are arguably the most profound, with a vast increase in precise task knowledge, a shift from conscious analysis to intuitive thinking (saving time and energy), and elaborate self-monitoring mechanisms that allow for constant adjustments in real time.

   Supporting Ericsson’s thesis is his observation, from many pieces of research, that “expert performance is
primarily
mediated by acquired mental representation
s
that allow the experts to anticipate courses of action, to control those aspects that are relevant to generating their superior performance, and to evaluate alternative courses of action during performance or after the completion of the competition.” (Italics mine.) (Ericsson, “Deliberate practice and the modifiability of body and mind,” pp. 4–34.)

In other words, most of the advantages held by superior achievers, even among athletes, occur in particular regions of the brain. Better musicians, typists, hockey goalies, etc., are all able to draw on more elaborate mental representations of what they want to do—and to execute them more efficiently.

This first came to researchers’ attention in studies of typists, when the researchers realized that the better and faster typists were able to look further ahead and prepare themselves better for future keystrokes. Later, they observed the same thing with hockey goalies, tennis players, and baseball batters—showing that they had more elaborate mental preparation for the events about to unfold
and
that they could more efficiently draw on better “anticipatory cues” to make better decisions and execute more efficient motor function in real time.

“Experts certainly know more, but they also know differently,” says Ericsson. “Expertise is … not a simple matter of fact or skill acquisition, but rather a complex construct of adaptations of mind and body, which include substantial self-monitoring and control mechanisms.”

He continues: “There is an element of unencumbered elegance in expert performance, the underpinnings of which are based on the efficient management and control of the adaptive processes. A source for this might be in abstracted layers of control and planning.” (Ericsson et al., eds.,
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
, p. 57.)

    
“Deliberate practice is a very special form of activity
”:
Ericsson et al., “Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance,” pp. 3–56.

    
Recall Eleanor Maguire’s 1999 brain scans of London cabbies, which revealed greatly enlarged representation in the brain region that controls spatial awareness
.
The same holds for any specific task being honed; the relevant brain regions adapt accordingly.

See earlier note, beginning, “Further, her conclusion was perfectly consistent with what others have discovered in recent studies …”