Musical Prodigies: Past, Present, and Future Perspectives on Exceptional Performance and Creativity
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UTRECHT UNIVERSITY MUSICAL PRODIGIES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES ON EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE AND CREATIVITY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS RESEARCH MASTER MUSICOLOGY BY FREYA MARGARETHA DE MINK STUDENT ID. 3083101 SUPERVISOR DR. I. VAN DER TUIN SECOND READER PROF. K. KÜGLE UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS MAY 2013 Copyright © 2013 by F. M. de Mink All rights reserved Seine Miene macht Bibi für die Leute, weil er weiß, daß er sie ein wenig unterhalten muß. Aber er selbst für sein Zeil hat im stillen sein besonderes Vergnügen bei der Sache, ein Vergnügen, das er niemandem beschreiben könnte. —Thomas Mann, Das Wunderkind Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. vii Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Mozart, a Figure of Exceptionality ........................................................................... 8 1.1 Definition ......................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 Historical Sources .......................................................................................................... 10 1.3 Research on Prodigies ................................................................................................... 13 1.4 The Figure of Mozart ..................................................................................................... 16 1.5 Was the Young Mozart Really Exceptional? ................................................................ 22 1.6 Prodigies Today: The Construction of Exceptionality in the Case of Alma Deutscher 31 1.7 Limits of Exceptionality ................................................................................................ 35 Chapter 2 How Are Prodigies Creative? A Survey of Prodigies on YouTube ....................... 37 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 37 2.2 A First Encounter ........................................................................................................... 41 2.3 YouTube: Context, Medium or Stage of Prodigy Performance? .................................. 45 2.4 A Survey of Musical Prodigy Videos ............................................................................ 49 2.5 A Comparison Between Musical Prodigies Across Two Centuries .............................. 53 2.6 Asianness ....................................................................................................................... 61 2.7 Popularity, Audience, Consumers ................................................................................. 65 2.8 Prodigious Creativity ..................................................................................................... 70 Chapter 3 Prodigious Futures .................................................................................................. 76 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 76 3.2 The Promise of Co-incidence: Individuality and Temporality ...................................... 77 3.3 Domains That Produce Prodigies? ................................................................................ 83 3.4 Who Are the Experts? .................................................................................................... 91 3.5 A Positive and a Negative Mode of Response .............................................................. 95 3.6 Future: From Judgment to Openness. ............................................................................ 98 3.7 Reassembling the Mozart-Effect: Conclusions on Prodigious Performance and the Domain of Music ............................................................................................................... 101 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 106 List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... 109 References ............................................................................................................................. 110 Appendix A ........................................................................................................................... 117 Table 1. Video and Source Description .............................................................................. 118 Table 2. Prodigies and Performance Details ...................................................................... 119 Table 3. Audience Statistics ............................................................................................... 120 Appendix B Selected Comments ........................................................................................... 121 Appendix C Video Transcript ............................................................................................... 132 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have reached its current state without the superlative support of my supervisor Iris van der Tuin, who has provided constructive and swift feedback on multiple preliminary versions of the main text. The initial planning and outline have benefited from comments and conversations with, among others, Milla Tiainen, John Rink, Anija Dokter, Barbara Titus, Bettina Papenburg and Elena Ungerheuer. I am grateful to Mohsen Mohammadi, Katrine Smiet, Koen Mooij, Marijn Zijp for guiding me to specific sources at pivotal moments. Further gratitude goes to Louise Richardson-Self, Peta Hinton, Michiel Kamp, Jannie Pranger, Anna Goldbeck-Wood, Bryony Buck, Anija Dokter, and Leo Lousberg, who gave support in the final stages with copy-edits and proofreading. The Graduate School of the Humanities, Erasmus, AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice and AtGender have provided financial support for conference visits during which I was able to present, discuss and further shape parts of my argument. Last but not least, I would like to thank Karl Kügle, second supervisor, mentor and teacher of the core curriculum courses in musicology; my fellow students of the musicology and gender studies programs; and my parents and friends. vii Introduction Thomas Mann‘s novel Das Wunderkind, first published in 1903, is widely known for its satirical portrayal of the diverse audience members who are enthralled by the performance of a musical prodigy. The lines selected as the epigraph for this thesis, however, draw attention to the inner world of the prodigy: ‗Bibi made his face for the audience because he was aware that he had to entertain them a little. But he had his own private enjoyment in the thing too, an enjoyment which he could never convey to anybody‘ (Mann 1936, 5). Mann depicts the slightly exaggerated display of bodily gestures as grounded in a conscious act, a deliberate decision of the prodigy. After nearly three years of collecting responses on prodigies, in academic and non-academic, musical and non-musical encounters, I must conclude that this is a highly unusual perspective. Rather than insisting on the exploitative and child-unfriendly pedagogies behind the unusual spectacle, as many do, Mann provokes even further thoughts through the notion of an inexplicable joy. Whereas the capacities for reasoning may still be confirmed on a verbal level, the latter is an experience that remains utterly implicit. The most common responses to prodigies, as I will argue in this thesis, overlook or explicitly exclude the possibility of rational thought and emotion: ―a well-trained monkey,‖ ―a robot,‖ or ―simply too young to express real emotion‖ are examples of this kind. This research draws on historical and contemporary sources to investigate matters and meanings of exceptionality and creativity in performances of musical prodigies. The main research question is: In which ways do written traces of prodigy performances from around 1800 and written and audio-visual traces in 2013 deepen, enrich, and complicate current understandings of exceptional performance, creativity, and the nature of the prodigy phenomenon? Two further questions signal the critical historical and theoretical trajectories that will be pursued. Firstly, how do prodigy performances in the past and present connect to, continue and diverge from the child Mozart, who is often claimed to be the most exceptional and most famous prodigy of all time? Secondly, what do third-wave feminist and new materialist theories have to offer to prodigy research, particularly concerning the theorization of the unique nature of the prodigy phenomenon? Prodigy research falls by and large within giftedness studies, a subfield of psychology. As I entered this field with a background in historical musicology, feminist theory and piano performance, it was not a surprise to find great dissonances between the methodological and 1 epistemological perspectives used and the ones with which I am most familiar. Broadly put, the difference concerns a focus on the social and natural sciences in prodigy research, and an orientation towards the humanities and performing arts on my part. It was surprising, by contrast, to find that the most rudimentary, widely cited