WHAT IS TALENT?

“Talent” is a big deal in classical music, and I’m not exactly sure how to define it. Clearly, a little kid who learns to play an instrument quickly and can learn new repertoire fast and play a concerto with orchestra by age five has more musical talent than a kid who gets lost and makes you cringe at one of those kid recitals with Halloween costumes and cupcakes.

Is it having perfect pitch? Is it the ability to memorize music effectively and quickly? Is it having beautiful phrasing? It is making a pretty sound? Is it having good intonation? Is it having something deeply human to express? Is it being able to play fast? Play loud? Having a fast tongue? Is it being able to make good reeds? Is it knowing how to listen to others? Is it knowing how to lead? Is it being a good person? Is it being able to transpose easily? No one really says.

It’s something we talk about in children and then stop talking about in adults. Eventually, the people in music who weren’t playing concertos at age five sometimes catch up with the people who were. If someone plays better at age 35 than some other 38-year-old, people aren’t saying it is because of talent anymore.

Mr. Needleman got in trouble in school because he was asked to rate the quality of his work and the quality of his effort on a scale of 1 to 5, but then he had to say what he thought was an ideal goal of quality and work that he should aim for. He said he was aiming work of a 5 quality with only 1 effort. Apparently, the answer was 5 quality with 5 effort.

I think all the attributes I listed in the second paragraph exist to varying degrees in “talented” musicians. Everyone is going to have to work on some element—no one comes out being awesome without a serious investment of time and work.

For me, the following attribute—which is one that can be cultivated and developed—is a better measure of so-called talent than finger or tongue speed or prodigious sound production.

It is hard to express the difficulty of studying music to someone who hasn’t really done it. It is hard work, and it is made even harder because it is not logical. You can work super, crazy hard—like a complete nutso—and sound worse as a result the next day. Or you can work super, crazy hard and learn something at the very end. You can spend all day at the reed table and come up with nothing good, or you can make something good in five minutes sometimes. And worst of all, on rare occasion, if you spend all day at the reed table, you can come up with something good in the end, which might trick you into thinking there was something good about all the work leading up to it. One day, you can all of a sudden sound better for no explainable reason. You can be well-prepared, be in a good place, and have something really embarrassing happen onstage at an important moment. You can have people who think you were great and people who think you were terrible listening to the same performance. The more time you spend in music, the more time all of these things will happen to you. Suffice it to say, it can be a frustrating endeavor.