Affinity, Talent, Olympics and a Music Teacher's Realistic Expectations

The Winter Olympics in Sochi are dominating the news this week, and we are watching young people do amazing things, things no regular human body can do. Indeed, these young people ARE like gods, pulling off feats of strength and agility, balance and speed that truly boggle the mind. And as always happens when I witness such extraordinary accomplishment, my mind wanders back to the question of talent.

The other thing that is dominating my personal world this week is a couple of sections of about 30 measures of music that are part of the program we are preparing for the upcoming La Mirada Symphony concert, of which I am now a member. As it happens, the two things overlap in that a good chunk of those 30 measures can be found in the cello part of John Williams' Olympic Fanfare and Theme, which we are going to perform in a couple weeks. You know the piece. You hear it whenever they start the broadcast of the Prime Time highlights. The rest of the measures are in Charles Ives' Variations on America, also on the program.

These are both great pieces of music, worthy of my best efforts. But, jeeze, John and Charlie! I get it. You wanted a shimmering, sizzling undercurrent of buzzing strings to support the themes riding high in the winds. But do we really have to play ALL those notes? At those speeds? What were you thinking? Do you hate cellists?

Okay, so the scene is set. I have been procrastinating all weekend. I must nail these passages, but I can not see how to do it. I am a fairly accomplished cellist, and back in the day when I practiced 8 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, I might have found my way to getting my fingers around these crazy licks. But I have other things to do in the next few weeks.

I have written in these pages before about my beliefs about talent. Namely, that if a person loves something enough, he or she will demonstrate what most people call talent. This passion will manifest early in the very best athletes-they say that Wayne Gretzky as a two-year old cried when the TV hockey games ended- musicians, mathematicians, dancers, etc. And if it is nurtured (or, occasionally and perversely, blocked in some cases) by adults and society, it will eventually bear fruit in the form of a successful career. That's it. I do not believe there is some pixie dust that drops on us from the universe to bestow magic powers on us. We may have certain physical attributes that lend themselves to development, but even those can be overcome, given enough drive to DO the thing. Short basketball players, deaf musicians, blind artists do exist because of affinity for the thing they want to do.

So here's the thing. I have been moaning to my ever-patient husband about the impossibility of the mastery of these passages. I storm around the house crying "Who can PLAY this stuff!? Who can THINK that fast"?! And he turns to me and says "I guess you just don't love it enough" (he has heard my rants about talent and affinity), and I guess he's right. I do love playing my cello, and I love to work things out and enjoy the thrill of nailing a difficult passage, but THIS music seems so pointlessly complicated somehow. And impossible. I guess I never loved playing cello enough to spend eight hours a day when I was little. And I didn't love it enough to obsess over orchestra music in high school or college. I got by. I loved playing when the music was a little challenging, and my efforts would be rewarded quickly. If I had really LOVED it at all those stages along the way, I probably would be able to play those passages now.

And that's what I really want to get to here. This is not really about my own limitations, but about how my students view their own limitations. As we are preparing a 4th year in a row for a shot at a Gold Rating at Forum Festival this spring, I have been badgering my students to practice more, spend the time, woodshed. I wonder if it seems impossible to them, perhaps, that they will be able to play some of this music I have chosen for them. They may not see the point in all those notes. They are kids with other things to do. They have homework, robotics, soccer, social lives, families. Only a handful of them LOVE it in the way that could be construed as talent, and those few are the core of whatever success the group will have. Can I make the others love it more? Should I back off of my badgering? Will some of them get the spark BECAUSE of me pushing them to do something they didn't know they could? Probably there is a little "yes" and a little "no" in the answer to each of these questions.

It's good to remind ourselves periodically what amazing things humans are capable of. These Olympians cause us to spout all the usual words about dedication, perseverance, and, yes, talent. But I really think they just love what they're doing. Why they love it so much is the mystery, perhaps. And that is not to disparage them or the incredible hard work that goes into doing what they do. But without the love, they are just like that kid in the back of the orchestra (maybe that kid is me) who is getting by and letting someone else bring home the gold.

The Talent Myth

Talent- a special innate or developed aptitude for an expressed or implied activity usually of a creative or artistic nature


I believe Talent is a myth. This is my own personal belief, and I have had spirited discussions with friends, family and colleagues about it. It came up again the other day with a co-worker, this notion that people who pursue and succeed at music are somehow different from regular people. It comes up that the defining difference is "natural" or "god-given" talent, and I reject this notion. Maybe it is the liberal and democratic part of my being that does so. I want everyone to feel able to participate in the joy of making music, and not sit on the sidelines because of some perceived lack of "talent". When it comes to music, I believe that everyone and anyone can learn, and the only real limit to that learning is what I call affinity.

Early exposure to music of all kinds, and an expectation from parents that a child WILL play music can give a person an advantage out of the chute. I see this every day, where kids who come to start a band instrument succeed quickly because they have had piano lessons and/or the parents have exposed them to lots of music, especially live performances. Such students take success on the new instrument as a given; that they will have to work at it to succeed is also understood from day one.

But I have also seen students who have no early exposure to live music, or very little, have had no previous training, and whose parents have zero expectation of their child becoming a musician move to the head of the class. But is it talent that explains musical success where the groundwork is missing? I don't think so. I think it is that a student discovers he really LIKES making music. He likes fooling around with the flute  or cello at home, making attempts to get sound, dragging the bow across the strings, trying the buttons, figuring out how to play Jingle Bells or the first few notes of Happy Birthday or the USC fight song.

And no one at home tries to stop him. Nothing makes me sadder as a music teacher than when a child tells me she cannot play at home because a parent won't let her. The family lives in an apartment, or has a small baby who needs to sleep, or the parent can't stand the squeaks and squawks that are inevitable at first. Or there might be a toddler in the home who might damage the instrument, so it is put away in a safe place, which is, unfortunately, not accessible to the fourth-grader either. These impediments WILL keep a student from succeeding.

But if the child has access and loves it, he or she will succeed. There ARE students who try it for a while and discover it isn't their cup of tea, this blowing and scraping away on some piece of arcane equipment. Some don't even feel compelled to try; music doesn't have any pull for them. They become visual artists or actors or dancers or soccer stars or history experts or spelling buffs or scientists, because that is what they LOVE to do.

What makes one person like one thing and not another? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe we need to redefine "talent" as something closer to "desire".

Maybe the job of the music teacher is to make sure the student is having fun. Due to some scheduling issues last year, I have almost all beginners in my elementary classes this year. There are a bunch of them. What's fun for a group of 30 beginning violinists, or a beginning band? I think, and am basing this year's pedagogy on this, that what's fun is success. I have been keeping this idea in mind, focusing on basics and getting it right. Sitting up with good posture, forming good embouchure, playing in tune, using a "beautiful bow hand", starting and stopping together are all things easy to overlook in the throes of trying to get some music happening, but when made the focus of the lesson, can be achieved by everyone and create an atmosphere of teamwork and accomplishment. What is interesting to me is that I hear from kids and the parents of those kids that they are having fun!

I have to admit, I didn't really think about this as I was going into the new year. I was thinking more about crowd control, breaking things down so I could manage so many beginners at once. The added benefit of creating successful moments for my students is something that I didn't foresee, but am enjoying nonetheless.

Now I hope I can keep the fun going, because that's where their future lies. Talent-shmalent. If they are having fun, they are going to keep playing. And if they keep playing, then doors open into worlds of fun they can't even imagine yet.