Music & Education Talks: Prodigy or Parent?

Hi, I'm Stephanie together, of course, with Virtual Sheet Music. Now, before you get too comfortable, I'd like you to put me on hold and look at the links that I've put below to be found in the written script of the video. In that way, we'll be in sync for today's discussion. You can either watch the entire link or just a fraction, your choice. So put me on hold now.

First video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omuYi2Vhgjo

Second video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF7DPveRuGY


So you've watched the links and you'll have gleaned that today's discussion deals with the precocious talents of wee creatures who've only just recently got out of their nappies. In America, I believe you say diapers. Now, I don't know about you, but my first sensation when I see these tiny tots is uncomfortableness. Firstly, I have certain misgivings regarding the displaying of one's children anyway. It's a type of exhibition that, for me, conjures up the idea of the performing monkey, a creature who neither gives consent to said performance nor in any case is capable of giving consent, as this requires knowledge-based discernment. And how much knowledge critical thinking capacity does a three year old have anyway? So ultimately, I find this type of display forced and frankly, un-child-centered.

So the next question is: what's the point of this type of performance exactly? Is it just for parental pride? Is it for all of us to enjoy the music of miniature human miracles? Is it for us at a collective level to admire and wonder at child geniuses? Well, regarding the latter points, we've got to be careful at using terms like miracle and genius anyway. These are terms that do seem to be overly used and glibly applied in this day and age, particularly as regards music. With genius being defined as, "Extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity," and that comes from Merriam-Webster. And without wishing to enter into a very complicated debate so often riddled with personal, unobjective opinions, I think at the very least, we've got to be very careful when assigning such descriptions both to adults and children. Call me semantic.

In any case, these musically-gifted children, impressively capable at a physical level, have natural inadequacies at a musical level. So an actual fact, their main gift is in the physical manipulation of their musical tool. For the trained musician, it's actually really easy to hear this as musical expression can be quite shaky, and in children so young, isn't this as it should be? And also, maybe this is a part of the attraction of listening to them. This reveals the importance of physicality as regards to your instrument, in relation to your instrument.

You can be extraordinarily musical but not be able to manage yourself physically to reveal this. And likewise, you can be absolutely amazing, and that's where the music starts and stops. Balance between these two factors, of course, is the key here together with this idea of interpretation. And this belies a minimum amount of no, not music history although music history obviously has an important part to play, but life experience. Music should reveal the gamut of human conditions and emotions, life, death, tragedy, comedy, and everything in between. So one must have contact with this even if only indirectly. So here, the importance of education, life experience comes to the fore. For surely, the more you know and understand about the world, the more emotion thought you can put into your art no matter what said art may be.

So clearly, children do have, and little children at that, have a natural disadvantage. Going back to the first point I made earlier of parental pride, isn't it natural that a parent would want to shout to the world the wondrous talents of his or her children? Look at Mozart's dad for example, whose sergeant major treatment at the expense of all else, incidentally, of his children led to enormously talented individuals and not just in music. He was maybe something akin to the tiger mothers of today, or is his approach toward one's children simply personal ego? The idea of producing something miraculous for the world to consume, something that directly reflects upon the genius parenting skills of the father, mother, or maybe it's just a person who's found his or her true vocation in parenting where neither needing a race nor a promotion. The demonstrable skills of said children are the equivalent of career satisfaction.

I, of course, have no answers to any of this. What I will say is that living through the miraculous abilities of one's children seems an odd way of parenting, not least because it is a relationship based on a child's ability at maintaining a certain level. What happens to the parent-child relationship when the apparent gift becomes normality or when achievement ceases to happen, a sense of failure in the child, a sense of failure in the parent who staked everything on this little individual? Who knows. What we do know is that children are gifts, but for them to be gifted requires enormous amounts of parental intervention and shear hard work both for the parent and for the child. For most of us, we can neither financially afford to consider this nor would we want to anyway.

After all, us adults are lifelong learners too. Denying absolutely everything in the name of our children would surely leave us ultimately damaged and in turn compromise our abilities as parents both now and in the future. So what's your opinion on all of this? Have I missed out on some salient point? Am I a mother with no philosophy whatsoever when it comes to music education or indeed education generally? Or are there points where we overlap? Please drop me your thoughts, comments and ideas here at VSM and help get the conversation cracking. Bye for now.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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