When she was nearly thirty, she wrote to Lili Kraus, "I have to leave you, Madame Kraus. I have to leave Fort Worth, and my parents, and my world as I know it, and jump into New York City." Candy sold everything she had to pay for Juilliard. "My parents were in tears," she recalled. "They knew I needed to do something, but they really didn't know what was ahead."

What she discovered at Juilliard was people. "I was so tired of being alone, on the road, in my career, in my life, in every way all the time," she recalled. Candy became romantically involved with a violinist at Juilliard, Andrew Schast. Andy was offered a job with the Dallas Symphony, and Candy married him and returned to Texas. Not long afterward, the marriage started to fall apart. "He was the esteemed conductor, and I had nothing to do," Candy recalled. Her relationship to Kraus had been poisoned by Kraus's one-upmanship; now she found it difficult not to compete with her husband. "I was ready to leave him," she said. Then she discovered she was pregnant. Motherhood unexpectedly united them; it focused Candy's energies on someone other than herself. "As a prodigy, you're always the most important person in the room," she said. "Miss Perfect, that's who I'd always been, and now, it wasn't about me. As it turns out, that's what I really wanted all along." she recalled. Candy became romantically involved with a violinist at Juilliard, Andrew Schast. Andy was offered a job with the Dallas Symphony, and Candy married him and returned to Texas. Not long afterward, the marriage started to fall apart. "He was the esteemed conductor, and I had nothing to do," Candy recalled. Her relationship to Kraus had been poisoned by Kraus's one-upmanship; now she found it difficult not to compete with her husband. "I was ready to leave him," she said. Then she discovered she was pregnant. Motherhood unexpectedly united them; it focused Candy's energies on someone other than herself. "As a prodigy, you're always the most important person in the room," she said. "Miss Perfect, that's who I'd always been, and now, it wasn't about me. As it turns out, that's what I really wanted all along."

Candy eventually became the organist and musical director at the local Episcopal church. When I attended services there, I asked some of the congregants what they made of the music. Everyone knew she was a fine musician, but many of them didn't listen to classical music outside church, and some had never liked it before joining St. Andrew's. Listening to Candy play there felt a little like Babette's Feast, Babette's Feast, as the congregation stood up and sat down and fumbled with their hymnals while perfectly sublime harmonies cascaded all around them. as the congregation stood up and sat down and fumbled with their hymnals while perfectly sublime harmonies cascaded all around them.

The parents of a prodigy cannot know whether that child will have sufficient skill for a career in music, and equally cannot know whether that child will want such a life. The pressure can be overwhelming, and even those who like performing may not want to live with constant travel that makes sustained relationships nearly impossible. Are parents preparing their child for a life that he or she will actually enjoy in adulthood? Many such parents have a single-minded focus on a solo career and don't deign to explore other ways to have a life in music, such as orchestral and chamber performance.

David Waterman's aunt Fanny, who has been called "Britain's best-known piano teacher," founded the Leeds Piano Competition, and both his elder sisters were prodigies. His parents were too worn out to push their third child toward music, too. Instead, he was pressured to become an all-around excellent student, and he decided very definitely against being a prodigy, learning the cello at a recreational pace. As a teenager, he fell in love with chamber music and the sociability it entailed. He joined an amateur quartet while he was an undergraduate studying philosophy at Cambridge and undertook a PhD there so he could keep his campus housing while he decided whether to become a professional cellist.

In 1979, David founded the Endellion String Quartet with three other musicians who had all been prodigies; thirtysome years later, the group has had to replace only one member and is going strong. David described how liberating it was for him to have a broad education and know that he could function in many other areas. That is not to say that his late start did not come at a cost. "If the quartet doesn't play for a week, the level to which I sink in that time is alarming. That doesn't happen to them. I'm sure that's to do with how deeply ingrained their movements are." He acknowledged, however, that a broader education had helped his human relations. "Knowing how to articulate has been very valuable for the quartet," he said.

I wondered whether David regretted those lost years of early practice. "I'd most likely be a failed soloist, instead of a successful chamber musician," he said. "I might be a better cellist now if I had made that decision in my teens. But I think I'd be a much less happy person. And that would actually make me a lesser cellist."

Musicians such as Ken Noda, Candy Bawcombe, and David Waterman retain a quieter life in music than their parents fantasized for them; others decide to keep playing but give up the notion of being heard. I knew someone in college, Louise McCarron, who showed brilliant talent as a pianist. In her early twenties, she was to make her Kennedy Center debut. Her parents hired a bus to take friends and relatives to the performance. Two days before the concert, everyone received notice that Louise had had an injury and would be unable to play. I thought it might be repetitive stress from all the practicing, but it was simply that her pinkie hurt. In the twenty-five years since, Louise has never scheduled or made a public performance. She lives alone in an apartment with two pianos and practices eight hours a day. Dating and marrying are impossible because she must "give everything" to her art. When she occasionally comes to a party, she introduces herself as a concert pianist, even though she has never given a concert.

While a taste for wealth and fame can propel parents of prodigies into exploitation, most are not venal; they are unself-aware, and powerless to separate their wishes from their children's. Young children mirror back their parents' ambitions. If you dream of having a genius for a child, you will spot brilliance in your child, and if you believe that fame would have salved all your own unhappiness, you will see a longing for prominence in your son's or daughter's face. While many performers are self-involved, it is often the parents of prodigies who are most obviously narcissistic. They may invest their own hopes, ambitions, and identities in what their children do rather than who their children are. Instead of cultivating curiosity, they may sprint for fame. Though they sometimes seemed pitiless to me, they were seldom vindictive; the abuse they perpetrated reflected a tragic misunderstanding of where one human being ends and another begins. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no power is more absolute than parenthood. The children of these parents, despite being the subjects of obsessive attention, suffer from not being seen; their sorrow is organized not so much around the rigor of practicing as around invisibility. Accomplishment entails giving up the pleasures of the present moment in favor of anticipated triumphs, and that is an impulse that must be learned. Left to their own devices, children do not become world-class instrumentalists before they turn ten. and identities in what their children do rather than who their children are. Instead of cultivating curiosity, they may sprint for fame. Though they sometimes seemed pitiless to me, they were seldom vindictive; the abuse they perpetrated reflected a tragic misunderstanding of where one human being ends and another begins. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no power is more absolute than parenthood. The children of these parents, despite being the subjects of obsessive attention, suffer from not being seen; their sorrow is organized not so much around the rigor of practicing as around invisibility. Accomplishment entails giving up the pleasures of the present moment in favor of anticipated triumphs, and that is an impulse that must be learned. Left to their own devices, children do not become world-class instrumentalists before they turn ten.

When I spoke to Marion Price on the telephone to set up our interview, I invited her to bring her violinist daughter, Solanda, for dinner, but she said, "We have a family of fussy eaters, so we'll eat before we come." The Prices arrived wearing coats, and I offered to hang them up. Marion, speaking for her husband and daughter as well, said, "That won't be necessary," and they sat through the interview holding their outerwear. I offered them something to drink, but Marion said, "We are so used to our schedule, and it's not time for a drink right now." In three hours, none of them had had a sip of water. I had put out homemade cookies, and Solanda kept glancing at them; every time she did, Marion shot her a look. When I asked Solanda a question, her mother constantly jumped in to answer on her behalf; when Solanda did reply, she did so with an anxious glance at her mother, as though worried whether she'd delivered the right response.

The Prices live around their musical talent. Sondra, ten years older than Solanda, is a pianist; Vikram, four years older than Solanda, is a cellist. When Solanda was five, her parents had all three children in a children's orchestra; they now perform as a trio. Marion is African-American; Solanda's father, Ravi, is Indian, and he writes and plays smooth jazz. "We're hearing the word gifted, gifted, we're hearing the word we're hearing the word musical musical," Marion said. "We see three children who, when they practice together, it seems like one person." It's an oddity of English that the word play play refers both to what children do for fun and what musicians do for a living, and it is misguided to infer from these homonyms that performance and practice are recreational activities. refers both to what children do for fun and what musicians do for a living, and it is misguided to infer from these homonyms that performance and practice are recreational activities.

"We had music going from the time Solanda was conceived," Marion said. Solanda started piano lessons at four. "But she fell in love with Itzhak Perlman and the violin. Solanda got that violin when she was almost five. The nurture has always been there, but when you have a child who within a moment of having received that violin, they are making music, there's something innate there as well." Solanda explained, "I chose the violin because I thought it sounded like my voice." She began studying at Juilliard just shy of six. But her instructor "was kind of scrambling to keep up with what Solanda really needed," Marion said. "Solanda was digesting everything on the spot. She wanted to play the Beethoven D Major Concerto, the Brahms D Major, the Mendelssohn E Minor. And music theory is just the air she breathes." almost five. The nurture has always been there, but when you have a child who within a moment of having received that violin, they are making music, there's something innate there as well." Solanda explained, "I chose the violin because I thought it sounded like my voice." She began studying at Juilliard just shy of six. But her instructor "was kind of scrambling to keep up with what Solanda really needed," Marion said. "Solanda was digesting everything on the spot. She wanted to play the Beethoven D Major Concerto, the Brahms D Major, the Mendelssohn E Minor. And music theory is just the air she breathes."

All three Price children have been homeschooled. Marion develops the curriculum, and Ravi does the actual teaching. I asked Solanda about having friends, and Marion said that Solanda's siblings were her best friends. I asked Solanda what she did for fun. "Basically, Juilliard," Solanda said.

Solanda had been asked to perform at an important ceremony in the nation's capital. "I was nervous," Solanda said. "It was very, very shocking to be there, but I played my best and I didn't mess up." Marion said that both Solanda and the trio had been invited to play all around the country. "She played in the Midori and Friends series, and Midori was there. We have the photos to prove it. We're looking for more opportunities." In a rare interpolation, Ravi said, "We need to take it up to the next level, where it would be, as necessary, profitable." Marion was clearly embarrassed by the mention of money. There had been a few paid performances, she said, but her children mostly played for joy-"and it just so happens that their joy is something that brings joy for others," she explained. "I don't consider us to be pushy parents. Involved parents. Supportive parents. But I don't think we're pushy. I know what that looks like. I think we're just able to respond to what our children are asking for."

In general, I don't ask musicians to perform when I interview them. Marion was holding a violin case in her lap, however, so I asked Solanda if she wanted to play. Marion said, "What do you think you'll play, Solanda?" Solanda said, "I think I'll just play the Bach Chaconne." Marion said, "How about the Rimsky-Korsakov?" Solanda said, "No, no, no, the Chaconne is better." I was struck that Solanda had chosen the instrument for its resemblance to her voice; now it provided her only chance to be heard over her mother. Solanda played the Chaconne. When she finished, Marion said, "Now you can play the Rimsky-Korsakov." Solanda launched into "Flight of the Bumblebee," the proof of every virtuoso. Marion said, "Vivaldi?" and Solanda played "Summer" from The Four Seasons The Four Seasons. She played with a clear, bright tone, although not with such brilliance as to resolve the question of why a childhood had been sacrificed for this art. I had hoped Solanda would light up at her instrument, but instead she brought out the violin's searing melancholy. childhood had been sacrificed for this art. I had hoped Solanda would light up at her instrument, but instead she brought out the violin's searing melancholy.

While the behavior of parents can be damaging, those parents can be victimized along with their children by the classical music industry. Many managers seem to believe that the only way to keep a paying audience is to ensure a constant flow of young musicians. There has always been a market for prodigies, but in the past thirty years the tendency has been to find a new one every week. A machinery has been established by people with short-term interests in the people they are using, for whom even the child's mental health is only a mercenary concern. "It's like burning fossil fuels," Justin Davidson said. "Constantly replenishing the prodigy supply, you flood the market. These managers are creating an oversupply of people who can do a narrow range of things, many of which are no longer of great interest. They're preparing them for a future that's in the past."

"It's a bewildering preoccupation," the pianist Mitsuko Uchida said to me. "Ask those audiences how they'd like to be represented in court by a seven-year-old; let them try surgery with a very gifted eight-year-old." The critic Janice Nimura said, "The child prodigy is the polite version of the carny freak. Gawking at the dog-faced boy in the sideshow is exploitative, but gawking at the six-year-old concert pianist on the Today Today show is somehow okay, even inspiring, demonstrating just how high human potential can soar." While etiquette demands that we not stare at dwarfs, it makes no such claim for the privacy of the prodigy. show is somehow okay, even inspiring, demonstrating just how high human potential can soar." While etiquette demands that we not stare at dwarfs, it makes no such claim for the privacy of the prodigy.

Pushing talented children can backfire; not pushing them can backfire, too. Leonard Bernstein's father, when asked why he'd opposed his son's career, replied, "How did I know he was going to be Leonard Bernstein?" Doing the interviews for this chapter, I began to feel that half the parents of these children had coerced them into an uncongenial musical life, while the other half had unreasonably held their children back. Jonathan Floril has the dubious distinction of having lived both cliches.

As a child in Ecuador in the early 1990s, Jonathan yearned for music lessons, but his mother, Elizabeth, didn't think music important, while his father, Jaime Ivan Floril, who had left the marriage before Jonathan was born, ran a music academy and didn't think his son warranted the training. Jaime finally relented and allowed Jonathan to take piano at eleven. Within three months, the piano teacher told Jaime that Jonathan had a talent too significant for Ecuador and needed to train in Europe. had a talent too significant for Ecuador and needed to train in Europe.

Jonathan's mother was enraged at the thought of his going abroad and tried to hold on to him through a legal battle for custody. "She was killing me," Jonathan remembered, "because my passion for music was everything." Two months later, Jaime closed his academy to take his son to Europe. Elizabeth had notified the police that her husband was trying to kidnap Jonathan, so they drove by night across an unmanned border in the Andes to Colombia to board a plane to Madrid. Jonathan, who had studied piano for less than six months, was accepted into the fifth year at the Rodolfo Halffter Conservatory.

His mother persisted in trying to get him back, and Jonathan had to assert over and over to the Spanish police that he wanted to stay there. "With all the weight that I had from my mother, I didn't know whether what I had done was right or wrong, and my father couldn't tell me," Jonathan said. He started reading for moral guidance: Aristotle's Ethics Ethics and Plato's and Plato's Republic, Republic, Saint Thomas, Jose Ortega y Gasset. When he was twenty, I asked him what he now thought about his departure to Spain. "My mother said that music would prevent me from living my childhood," he replied. "But I didn't want to live my childhood anymore." Between eleven and sixteen, Jonathan won more than twenty competitions; his father, who could not find work as a music teacher, took a clerical job instead. "My prodigy time was very, very stressful," Jonathan said. He returned to Ecuador for the first time when he was fifteen, four years after his departure, to play a major concert. Though his mother greeted him there joyously, an unbridgeable gap had opened. Saint Thomas, Jose Ortega y Gasset. When he was twenty, I asked him what he now thought about his departure to Spain. "My mother said that music would prevent me from living my childhood," he replied. "But I didn't want to live my childhood anymore." Between eleven and sixteen, Jonathan won more than twenty competitions; his father, who could not find work as a music teacher, took a clerical job instead. "My prodigy time was very, very stressful," Jonathan said. He returned to Ecuador for the first time when he was fifteen, four years after his departure, to play a major concert. Though his mother greeted him there joyously, an unbridgeable gap had opened.

The next year, he earned a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music; he soon made his debut in Valencia and was reviewed as "more than a prodigy, because of not only what he performs, but also how he performs." His studies were changing him. "I started to grow into different criteria of musicianship," he said. "My father was asking me to work on repertoire that I thought was senseless; he set himself against me, and I hated him for that. I needed to do something besides win another prize." Having fled his mother in Ecuador, he now left his father. "He wanted me to learn popular selections and make a CD. I thought I was going to get lost in that superficial way of doing music. So he kicked me out of my home in Madrid. I had to pack in two hours. It was that drastic." I asked what effect that second exile had had on him, and he said, "It seems to me almost a pilgrimage, the way that I walk as a musician through life. Sometimes I feel that my fingers moving on the keys, it's like how a blind person reads in Braille. There is so much meaning that you find only when you are touching the instrument. I search to bring something noble to the world, something as noble as the passion of Jesus Christ. I'm not actually a religious person, but I believe there's something higher than us, that makes music what it is. I can serve that thing, even if I cannot see or know it." much meaning that you find only when you are touching the instrument. I search to bring something noble to the world, something as noble as the passion of Jesus Christ. I'm not actually a religious person, but I believe there's something higher than us, that makes music what it is. I can serve that thing, even if I cannot see or know it."

At twenty, Jonathan will not play a Chopin mazurka without knowing the folk mazurkas that inspired it, and he won't play a nocturne without studying the time of bel canto. "Recently, I have gone back to recordings from the 1930s of Ecuadorean music," he told me. "The way I think and am is still rooted in my country, so I need to keep this part of myself alive." I wondered how the traumas of leaving his mother, then his country, and then his father still echoed. "I do not think there was another way," he said. "I understand why my parents turned against me. We all hate what we don't understand."

Gore Vidal wrote, "Hatred of one parent or the other can make an Ivan the Terrible or a Hemingway: the protective love, however, of two devoted parents can absolutely destroy an artist." Early trauma and deprivation become the engines of some children's creativity. One researcher reviewed a list of eminent people and found that more than half had lost a parent before age twenty-six-triple the rate of the general population. A horrific upbringing can kill talent or bring it to life. It is a matter of having a match between how the parents act and what a particular child needs. Robert Sirota said, "It's very easy to destroy a talent; it's much less likely that nurture can create ability where none existed."

Lang Lang, often billed as the world's most famous pianist, is the embodiment of brilliance honed in punishment. His father, Lang Guoren, wanted to be a musician but was assigned to a factory during the Cultural Revolution. When his eighteen-month-old son showed signs of being a prodigy, Lang Guoren's longing reared up. From the age of three, Lang Lang woke up every morning at five to practice. "My passion was so huge that I wanted to eat the piano up," he said. His teacher was astonished by his memory; he could memorize four big pieces every week. "My teacher was always telling her students to learn more," he said, "but she was telling me to slow down." At seven, at China's first national children's competition in Taiyuan, he took an honorable mention for talent and rushed onto the stage, shouting, "I don't want the prize for talent, I don't want it!" When another contestant ran over to comfort him, saying that he, too, had won an honorable mention, Lang Lang said, "You think you can compete with me? What the hell can you play?" Lang Lang's prize was a stuffed-dog toy; he threw it in the mud and trampled it, but his father picked it up and kept it on the piano at home in Shenyang, so Lang Lang would never forget how much work he had to do. me? What the hell can you play?" Lang Lang's prize was a stuffed-dog toy; he threw it in the mud and trampled it, but his father picked it up and kept it on the piano at home in Shenyang, so Lang Lang would never forget how much work he had to do.

Lang Guoren had become a member of the special police-a prestigious job. He decided, however, that he had to take Lang Lang to Beijing to seek a place at the Attached Primary School of the Conservatory of Music, while Lang Lang's mother, Zhou Xiulan, would stay behind to earn money to support her son and her husband. "I was nine, and it was really painful to leave home, and I realized that my father was quitting his job to be with me," Lang Lang said. "I felt such pressure." Lang Guoren taught Lang Lang his maxim: "Whatever other people have, I will definitely have; whatever I have, nobody else will have."

Lang Guoren described quitting his job as "a kind of amputation." He rented the cheapest apartment they could find, without heat or running water, and told his son that the rent was much higher than it actually was. "That much money?" Lang Lang replied, shocked. "I had better really practice." He missed his mother terribly, and he often cried. Lang Guoren, who had always scorned domestic work, had to cook and clean. The teacher they had come to see in Beijing assessed Lang Lang harshly. "She said I played like a potato farmer," he recalled, "that I should taste Coca-Cola and play Mozart like that; my playing was flavorless water. She said, 'You Northeasterners are big, coarse, and stupid.' Eventually she said, 'Go home. Don't be a pianist.' Then she fired me."

Shortly thereafter, Lang Lang stayed after school to play piano for the celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and he was two hours late coming home. When he walked in, Lang Guoren beat him with a shoe, then proffered a handful of pills and said, "You're a liar and you're lazy! You have no reason to live. You can't go back to Shenyang in shame! Dying is the only way out. Take these pills!" When Lang Lang did not take the pills, Lang Guoren pushed the boy onto the apartment's balcony and told him to jump. Lang Guoren later explained his behavior with a Chinese proverb: "If you do not let go of your child, you cannot fight the wolves." In other words, coddling exposes everyone to disaster. But Lang Lang was furious and refused to touch the piano for months, until his father swallowed his pride and begged him.

Lang Guoren had also begged another teacher to work with his son and sat through the lessons so that he could reinforce the instruction at home. "He never smiled," Lang Lang said. "He was scaring me, sometimes beating me. We were like monks. The music monks." A family friend commented that Lang Guoren never showed affection or let his son know that he was pleased. "It was only when his son was sound asleep that he would sit by him silently and gaze at him, fix his quilt, and touch his small feet," the friend wrote. friend commented that Lang Guoren never showed affection or let his son know that he was pleased. "It was only when his son was sound asleep that he would sit by him silently and gaze at him, fix his quilt, and touch his small feet," the friend wrote.

When they went back to Shenyang for the summer, Lang Guoren treated the visit as a mere change of location for piano exercises. Zhou Xiulan fought with him, demanding, "What does it matter to be a 'grandmaster' or not a 'grandmaster'? What the hell are you doing, acting as if you are preparing for war every day? How does this resemble a family?" Lang Lang would try to distract them from their arguments with his music; a friend said, "Every time they fought, his playing progressed." He worked so hard that he collapsed and had to go to the hospital for intravenous fluids every day, but his practice schedule never changed. "My father is a real fascist," Lang Lang said. "A prodigy can be very lonely, locked out of the world."

He was finally accepted at the Attached Primary School and then, at eleven, he auditioned to represent China at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Germany. He was not selected. Lang Guoren told his wife that she had to raise enough money to enter Lang Lang privately, which was contrary to etiquette and potentially humiliating. Before the contest, Lang Guoren identified a blind pianist from Japan as Lang Lang's most serious opponent and told Lang Lang to draw out his competitor about technique. Lang Lang then attempted to integrate the same approach into his own playing. When Lang Lang won, Lang Guoren sobbed for joy; when others told Lang Lang of his father's response, Lang Lang countered that his father was incapable of tears.

In 1995, at thirteen, Lang Lang entered the second International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. His father would eavesdrop on the other contestants practicing and urged Lang Lang to do the same if anyone was working on the same piece that he was. In Lang Guoren's view, if the pianist before you played with strength, you should play with delicacy; if he played softly, you should begin with strength. This tactic would make it easier for the judges to remember you and would capture the attention of the audience. When someone later asked Lang Guoren how a thirteen-year-old could play something as heartbreaking as Chopin's Second Piano Concerto for the finals, he said he'd told Lang Lang to think about his separation from his beloved mother and his beloved country. Lang Lang won.

Within months, Lang Guoren withdrew his son from the Central Conservatory. He had arranged an audition with Gary Graffman at Curtis. Lang Lang recalled, "My dad said, 'The Chopin should be as light as the wind; the Beethoven should be heavy; when you use your explosive strength, be firm, generous, and natural, as if you were a mix of the English and Brazilian football teams.'" Lang Lang was accepted on the spot, and he and his father moved to the United States. During his first lesson at Curtis, Lang Lang said, "I'd like to win every competition that exists." Graffman said, "Why?" Lang Lang said, "To be famous." Graffman just laughed, but the other students told Lang Lang he should focus instead on being a superb musician; he didn't understand the difference. Though he has since learned tact, he has never entirely renounced this Olympic model. Graffman said to me, "With most students, you want to get them excited about the emotional content of the music. With Lang Lang, it was just the opposite: I had to calm him down enough so he could learn." light as the wind; the Beethoven should be heavy; when you use your explosive strength, be firm, generous, and natural, as if you were a mix of the English and Brazilian football teams.'" Lang Lang was accepted on the spot, and he and his father moved to the United States. During his first lesson at Curtis, Lang Lang said, "I'd like to win every competition that exists." Graffman said, "Why?" Lang Lang said, "To be famous." Graffman just laughed, but the other students told Lang Lang he should focus instead on being a superb musician; he didn't understand the difference. Though he has since learned tact, he has never entirely renounced this Olympic model. Graffman said to me, "With most students, you want to get them excited about the emotional content of the music. With Lang Lang, it was just the opposite: I had to calm him down enough so he could learn."

At seventeen, Lang Lang acquired a manager, who got him his first big break at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago. The critics were enraptured, and for the next two years Lang Lang sold out every concert, made numerous recordings, graced the covers of glossy magazines. "The higher the expectations, the better I play," he told me. "Carnegie Hall makes me play best of all."

Every tremendous prodigy story, like every political career, contains a backlash sequence that shocks the protagonist; the listening world has to go through its own rejecting adolescence between its childish rhapsody and its adult respect. Schadenfreude often makes the backlash mean. Lang Lang is socially porous, with a sensitivity to pleasing his specific audience that often seems reminiscent more of Beyonce than of Sviatoslav Richter. Though these qualities are not incompatible with profundity, his playing to the gallery offends some sophisticates. The extent of Lang Lang's self-branding is indicated by his having trademarked his name; he performs as "Lang Lang." He has signed endorsement deals with Audi, Montblanc, Sony, Adidas, Rolex, and Steinway. John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune, who had helped launch Lang Lang's career, said a few years later, "The music became an accessory to the soloist's acrobatic performance. All he needed was a white sequined suit and a candelabra and Ravinia could have sold him as the new Liberace." Anthony Tommasini, of the who had helped launch Lang Lang's career, said a few years later, "The music became an accessory to the soloist's acrobatic performance. All he needed was a white sequined suit and a candelabra and Ravinia could have sold him as the new Liberace." Anthony Tommasini, of the New York Times, New York Times, wrote that Lang Lang's solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2003 was "incoherent, self-indulgent and slam-bang crass." wrote that Lang Lang's solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 2003 was "incoherent, self-indulgent and slam-bang crass."

The narrative tension between composers' masterworks and Lang Lang's reading of them is exaggerated by his having grown up in a non-Western culture. "Western classical music in China is usually like Chinese food in the West: familiar but not quite the real thing," Lang Lang said. He can do an impeccable rendition of a Mendelssohn concerto and follow it up with a self-indulgent Mozart sonata played with inflated dynamics and distended tempo. But then he'll play elegantly again and critics will have to acknowledge his mastery. Five years after condemning him so sharply, Tommasini wrote that Lang Lang played "with utter command and disarming joy." When I see Lang Lang in concert, I am always struck by how much fun he appears to be having. "I'm not just giving as a performer," he said to me. "I'm also taking. My father is an introvert, my mother is an extrovert, and I am both: my father's discipline and my mother's happiness." and follow it up with a self-indulgent Mozart sonata played with inflated dynamics and distended tempo. But then he'll play elegantly again and critics will have to acknowledge his mastery. Five years after condemning him so sharply, Tommasini wrote that Lang Lang played "with utter command and disarming joy." When I see Lang Lang in concert, I am always struck by how much fun he appears to be having. "I'm not just giving as a performer," he said to me. "I'm also taking. My father is an introvert, my mother is an extrovert, and I am both: my father's discipline and my mother's happiness."

I first sat down with Lang Lang in 2005, in Chicago, when he was twenty-three. I had gone that afternoon to a particularly lovely performance in which he played the Chopin Piano Sonata no. 3 in B Minor. Following the performance, a line of some four hundred people waited patiently to get his autograph on their CDs, and Lang Lang never flagged. Afterward, Lang Lang invited me to talk in his room. When we arrived, Lang Guoren was watching television. He shook my hand, we exchanged pleasantries, and then, with his characteristic mix of brusqueness and intimacy, he took off his clothes and lay down for a nap. In my experience, everyone likes Lang Lang, and no one likes Lang Guoren, but Lang Lang is not as warm as he seems, and his father is not as harsh as he seems; they are collaborators in a single phenomenon. "When I turned twenty and became a huge success, I started to love my father," Lang Lang told me. "He listens very well, and he helps me do the laundry, pack. I'm a spoiled kid. After a big recital, nobody else is going to do a little massage at two o'clock in the morning while talking about the performance."

I once told Lang Lang that by American standards his father's methods would count as child abuse, and that their present conviviality was startling to me. "If my father had pressured me like this and I had not done well, it would have been child abuse, and I would be traumatized, maybe destroyed," Lang Lang responded. "He could have been less extreme and we probably would have made it to the same place; you don't have to sacrifice everything to be a musician. But we had the same goal. So since all the pressure helped me become a world-famous star musician, which I love being, I would say that, for me, it was in the end a wonderful way to grow up."

Several recent books hark back to the adage that practice makes perfect, setting the workload for mastery at ten thousand hours. The number is extrapolated from the observation by the Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson that by twenty, the top violinists at Berlin's Academy of Music had practiced an average of ten thousand hours over a decade, approximately twenty-five hundred hours more than the next most accomplished group. Skills and perhaps neurosystems develop through drilling. Recent surveys in which people were ranked for talent and then followed for practice time showed that practice time mattered more than talent. David Brooks wrote in the over a decade, approximately twenty-five hundred hours more than the next most accomplished group. Skills and perhaps neurosystems develop through drilling. Recent surveys in which people were ranked for talent and then followed for practice time showed that practice time mattered more than talent. David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, New York Times, "The primary trait is not some mysterious genius. It's the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine. We construct ourselves through behavior." "The primary trait is not some mysterious genius. It's the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine. We construct ourselves through behavior."

There is, without question, considerable truth in this idea; if this were not the case, education would be futile, and experience would be a waste of time. I'd much rather go up in a plane with a pilot who's been flying for a decade than with one who's on his maiden flight, and no one chooses to eat anyone's first souffle. But the sanctification of ten thousand hours as the basis for achievement has a Horatio Algerlike sentimentality to it. Leopold Auer, the last century's great violin pedagogue, used to tell pupils, "Practice three hours a day if you are any good, four if you are a little stupid. If you need more than that-stop. You should try another profession."

The inclination to practice assiduously may itself be inborn, and nourishing it may be at least as important as nourishing basic talent. The Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel developed the so-called marshmallow test in the 1960s. A child between four and six years old was sequestered with a marshmallow and told that he could eat it right away, or he could wait fifteen minutes and get an extra marshmallow. The children who could wait went on to have SAT scores, on average, 210 points higher than those of the children who could not. More recently, Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, gave high schoolers the choice between a dollar right away and two dollars in a week, and once more, those who could delay gratification had much higher levels of academic achievement, regardless of IQ. "Intelligence is really important," she said, "but it's still not as important as self-control."

Ellen Winner, who studies genius, has delineated a struggle between the "commonsense myth" that giftedness is innate and the "psychologists' myth" that giftedness is accrued through labor and study. The critic Edward Rothstein wrote, "The contemporary attack on genius is itself a mythology, an attempt to grasp the ungraspable by diminishing it, reducing it." Rothstein suggests that those who emphasize the role of sheer labor listen to Bach and Beethoven and try on the idea that they could have composed such music with sufficient effort. Veda Kaplinsky jokingly compared the question to what she'd once heard a psychiatrist say about sex in a marriage: "If the sex is good, it's ten percent. If it's bad, it's ninety percent." She explained, "If the talent is there, it's ten percent of the package. If the talent is not there, it becomes ninety percent, because they can't overcome the lack of it. But just having talent is really a very minor part of what is necessary in order to make it in music." If it's bad, it's ninety percent." She explained, "If the talent is there, it's ten percent of the package. If the talent is not there, it becomes ninety percent, because they can't overcome the lack of it. But just having talent is really a very minor part of what is necessary in order to make it in music."

Musicians often talked to me about whether you achieve brilliance on the violin by practicing for hours every day, or by reading Shakespeare, learning physics, and falling in love. The violinist Yehudi Menuhin said, "Maturity, in music and in life, has to be earned by living." The composer and performer Gabriel Kahane said, "There is always a Korean girl who has been locked in the basement practicing for longer than you have. You can't win that game." But more profoundly, normal life normal life in these contexts is a euphemism for a richer life. Single-minded devotion to an instrument builds proficiency-but music embraces experience. in these contexts is a euphemism for a richer life. Single-minded devotion to an instrument builds proficiency-but music embraces experience.

When I said that I was writing about prodigies, people kept mentioning a seven-year-old pianist named Marc Yu, who had appeared on Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, and and Oprah. Oprah. I was invited to his New York debut, a recital in the Park Avenue apartment of a Shanghai socialite. Marc had just turned eight, but his small stature made him look about six. He would solemnly lisp the name of his next selection, play it with incongruous power and musicality, then spin around to look at his dazzling mother, Chloe, to see how he'd done. I was invited to his New York debut, a recital in the Park Avenue apartment of a Shanghai socialite. Marc had just turned eight, but his small stature made him look about six. He would solemnly lisp the name of his next selection, play it with incongruous power and musicality, then spin around to look at his dazzling mother, Chloe, to see how he'd done.

Because Marc's legs were short, a little platform had been set up with extenders that allowed him to control the pedals. As he was playing a Chopin nocturne, the contraption shifted, and the pedals ceased to respond. Chloe crawled into the tight space below her son's pumping legs and began trying to realign the device. Marc didn't miss a note. Chloe couldn't make the thing work, so she kept lifting it and slamming it back down. It was so incongruous: the little boy intent on his fingering, and the stunning woman in her gown crouched noisily at his feet, the melodies pouring forth. It was as though Marc and Chloe were in a dialogue that the rest of us had stumbled on, a private interaction that could, ironically, take place only with an audience.

Well after the recital had ended and long past the bedtime of most eight-year-olds, Marc announced that he had learned the Emperor Concerto, and he played it for a few of us, counting out long silences for the orchestral passages, so he could come in exactly on cue. He brimmed with impatient, eager bravado, much as my eight-year-old niece does when she wants me to admire her swimming. As Marc made conversation with adults who were fascinated by him but not much interested in what he had to say, I guessed that his relationship with his mother might be the only one in which he is not anomalous. interested in what he had to say, I guessed that his relationship with his mother might be the only one in which he is not anomalous.

Chloe Yu was born in Macao and came to the United States to study when she was seventeen. She married at twenty-five, and Marc was born a year later, in Pasadena. From that day, Chloe played the piano to him. "He didn't start to speak until after he turned two," Chloe recalled. "I was worried. Then he started speaking, English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and a little bit of Shanghainese as well. I was so relieved!" When Marc was almost three, he picked out a few tunes on the piano with two fingers; in a year, he had surpassed Chloe's ability to teach him. At five, he added the cello to his regimen. "Soon he asked for more instruments," Chloe recalled. "I said, 'That's it, Marc. Be realistic. Two is enough.'"

Chloe gave up the master's degree she'd been working on. She had divorced Marc's father, but because she had no money, she and Marc ended up living with her ex-in-laws, who gave them a room over the garage. Marc's grandparents did not approve of his "excessive" devotion to the piano. "His grandmother loves him a lot," Chloe said. "But she just wanted him to be a normal five-year-old." When Marc was in preschool, Chloe felt he was ready to perform and contacted local retirement facilities and hospitals and offered free recitals so Marc could do so without pressure. Soon the papers were writing about this young genius. "When I began to understand how talented he is, I was so excited!" Chloe said. "And also so afraid!"

At six, Marc won a fellowship for gifted youth that covered the down payment on a Steinway. By the time Marc was eight, he and Chloe were flying to China bimonthly so that Marc could study with Dr. Minduo Li. Chloe explained that whereas her son's American teachers gave him broad interpretive ideas to explore freely, Dr. Li taught Marc measure by measure. "In the future, Marc will be telling people, 'I'm American-born, but trained in China.' China will love him for that." I asked Marc whether he found it difficult traveling so far for his lessons. "Well, fortunately, I don't have vestigial somnolence," he said. I raised my eyebrow. "You know-jet lag," he apologized.

Marc was being homeschooled to accommodate his performance and practice schedule. "After a huge breakfast, he's sleepy," Chloe said. "So, we schedule something less intense-work on technique, maybe do homework. In the late morning, he has a nap, and then he'll do something that will use his brain, learn new material. It's all about time management. He should be just in third grade, but he's ahead in all subjects." Marc was doing college prep work and taking an SAT class. Chloe serves as his manager and reviews concert invitations with him. "I consult my boss first," Chloe said. Marc looked at her with an expression of frank incredulity. "I'm your boss?" he asked. Later Chloe said, "If he changes his mind and wants to become a mathematician, I'd accept it. Maybe initially I would be upset because we have spent so much time on this-it would be just like breaking up with your boyfriend. It's not easy, right?" Marc said reassuringly, "I like piano. It's what I'm going to do." Chloe smiled. "Right now, yes. But you can never tell. You're only eight." him. "I consult my boss first," Chloe said. Marc looked at her with an expression of frank incredulity. "I'm your boss?" he asked. Later Chloe said, "If he changes his mind and wants to become a mathematician, I'd accept it. Maybe initially I would be upset because we have spent so much time on this-it would be just like breaking up with your boyfriend. It's not easy, right?" Marc said reassuringly, "I like piano. It's what I'm going to do." Chloe smiled. "Right now, yes. But you can never tell. You're only eight."

To play as Marc does requires an extraordinary level of concentration. Marc said, "How much I practice depends on my mood. Like if I really want to accomplish something or it's before a concert, I would say six to eight hours per day. But if I'm not really in the mood to practice, maybe four to five hours. I was interested in composing, but I've decided I need to focus." His playing has required equal discipline from Chloe. I asked her whether she thought about her old ambitions. She smiled and held out her arms to Marc. "This is my work," she said. When I visited them in LA, Chloe had just remarried, and Marc had played at the wedding banquet. Chloe refused to move into a house with her new husband, however, because she thought it would interfere with practicing with Marc; instead, they live a few streets apart. I was reminded of couples with disabled children who are split by the unusual needs of their sons and daughters.

Children like to have heroes, and Marc's is Lang Lang. After reading a story in the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times magazine in which Marc declared his admiration, Lang Lang got in touch. "I admire Lang Guoren a lot," Chloe said. "I don't want to hear the word magazine in which Marc declared his admiration, Lang Lang got in touch. "I admire Lang Guoren a lot," Chloe said. "I don't want to hear the word pushy pushy used about me. But I want to be strong for Marc the way he was strong for Lang Lang." A few years later, Lang Lang arranged for Marc to perform with him at the Royal Albert Hall. I attended the concert, and when we all met afterward, I was struck by Lang Lang's avuncular gentleness with his protege; I had never seen him so vulnerable. used about me. But I want to be strong for Marc the way he was strong for Lang Lang." A few years later, Lang Lang arranged for Marc to perform with him at the Royal Albert Hall. I attended the concert, and when we all met afterward, I was struck by Lang Lang's avuncular gentleness with his protege; I had never seen him so vulnerable.

I asked Chloe what she thought about the ten thousand hours. "It's more about nurture, I believe, than nature," Chloe said. "Marc's father had no interest in music, so the nature came from my side. The nurture came from me, too." She has strong views on American parenting. "In America, every kid has to be well rounded. They have ten different activities, and they never excel at any of them. Americans want everyone to have the same life; it's a cult of the average. This is wonderful for disabled children, who get things they would never have otherwise, but it's a disaster for gifted children. Why should Marc spend his life learning sports he's not interested in when he has this superb gift that gives him so much joy?"

Back in California, I asked Marc what he thought of a normal childhood. "I already have a normal childhood," he said. "Do you want to see my room? It's messy, but you can come anyway." So I went upstairs with him. He showed me a yellow, remote-controlled helicopter that his father had sent from China. The bookshelves were crammed with Dr. Seuss, Jumanji, Jumanji, and and The Wind in the Willows, The Wind in the Willows, but also but also Moby-Dick Moby-Dick; with Sesame Street Sesame Street videos and also a series of DVDs called videos and also a series of DVDs called The Music of Prague, The Music of Venice, The Music of Prague, The Music of Venice, and so on. We sat on the floor and he showed me his favorite Gary Larson cartoons, and then we played the board game Mouse Trap. He had a pair of rubber thumb-tips with lights inside, which he used for a magic trick that made it look as though the light he put in his mouth traveled right down to come out of his behind. and so on. We sat on the floor and he showed me his favorite Gary Larson cartoons, and then we played the board game Mouse Trap. He had a pair of rubber thumb-tips with lights inside, which he used for a magic trick that made it look as though the light he put in his mouth traveled right down to come out of his behind.

Then we went downstairs, and Marc sat on a phone book on the piano bench so his hands would be high enough to play comfortably. He squirmed for a minute, said, "No, it's not right," pulled one page from the phone book, sat down again, and launched into Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu Fantasie-Impromptu, which he imbued with a quality of nuanced yearning that seemed almost inconceivable in someone with a shelf of Cookie Monster videos. "You see?" Chloe said to me. "He's not a normal child. Why should he have a normal childhood?"

Classical music is largely a meritocracy, which makes it a fit route to social mobility for industrious people isolated by geography, nationality, or poverty. For many years, the prodigies were mostly Jews from Eastern Europe; now, the field is dominated by East Asians. Gary Graffman, himself one of the Jewish prodigies, has only six students, all of them Chinese. The general theory about the Asian dominance of classical music is that it reflects a sheer numbers game. "There are more than three hundred thousand children in China learning instruments," Graffman said. "If you see a child in Chengdu who is not carrying a violin case, it means he's studying the piano." Chinese and other tonal languages reinforce hearing acuity in infants and toddlers, and typical Chinese hands, with broad palms and generous spaces between the fingers, are especially well suited to the piano. Discipline and competitiveness are deeply valued and constantly reinforced in many Asian cultures. Because the study of Western music was not allowed in China during the Cultural Revolution, it took on the allure of a forbidden pleasure.

Many Westerners, meanwhile, are leery of "tiger mother" stereotypes. But the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote, "One cannot be exceptional and normal at the same time." The question of when to specialize receives very different answers from place to place; European students narrow their fields of study much earlier than American, and Asians focus earlier still. If music is a language, then to have an intuitive hold on its grammar and produce it without an accent requires training from a tender age. Graffman said, "You can take up the piano or the violin at sixteen and learn to play rather well, but you'll be too late to become a first-rate soloist." Early specialization requires sacrifices. "Upper-class parents want their children to have arts, athletics, and community service," said Robert Blocker, dean of the Yale School of Music. "But it's very distracting for someone who really wants to be a musician. Profound achievement is usually the result of early identification and specialization." of when to specialize receives very different answers from place to place; European students narrow their fields of study much earlier than American, and Asians focus earlier still. If music is a language, then to have an intuitive hold on its grammar and produce it without an accent requires training from a tender age. Graffman said, "You can take up the piano or the violin at sixteen and learn to play rather well, but you'll be too late to become a first-rate soloist." Early specialization requires sacrifices. "Upper-class parents want their children to have arts, athletics, and community service," said Robert Blocker, dean of the Yale School of Music. "But it's very distracting for someone who really wants to be a musician. Profound achievement is usually the result of early identification and specialization."

If the gamble pays off, the sacrifices are easier to live with. When Lang Lang told me he was reconciled with his upbringing, I thought of the people who, long after the fact, were glad that their parents had encouraged them to undergo limb-lengthening-of how what looks like abuse in the present does not necessarily seem so once it's been completed successfully. On the other hand, how many children have loathed practicing the piano and then, as adults, bemoaned that their parents let them quit taking lessons? The danger is that being pushed toward early specialization can leave children believing that they have only one way to succeed. "It's irresponsible not to have a plan B," Karen Monroe said. Prodigies who don't make it will have worked insanely hard on something that can no longer sustain them, after having neglected skills needed to pursue any other kind of life. Blocker addressed a meeting in Korea for parents who hoped to send their children to Western music schools. After explaining the admissions process, he put down his notes and said, "I think it's really unfortunate that all of you came in here today. Many of you will send your children to another country at age twelve, thirteen, fourteen. One parent will come and the family will be divided. The students who go through this so young are vacant by the time they reach us. It's not that there's an absence of feeling and longing and intellect and music in there; it's that they could not be nurtured by touch or a family meal." There followed a stony silence.

If Chloe Yu scorned the idea of a normal childhood, May Armstrong simply had to bow to the reality that no such thing could be achieved with her son, Kit, born in 1992. Chloe, who believes in the dominance of nurture, may be said to have pushed her son toward his prowess; May, on the other hand, seems to have been compelled by hers into an alarming inevitability. Kit could count at fifteen months; May taught him addition and subtraction at two, and he worked out multiplication and division for himself. While digging in the garden, he explained the principle of leverage to his mother. By three, he was asking questions to which the answer was the theory of relativity. May, an economist, was frankly bemused. "A child of that ability can teach himself," she said. "A mother wants to be protective, but he was so capable that he didn't need protection. I can't say that was easy." and division for himself. While digging in the garden, he explained the principle of leverage to his mother. By three, he was asking questions to which the answer was the theory of relativity. May, an economist, was frankly bemused. "A child of that ability can teach himself," she said. "A mother wants to be protective, but he was so capable that he didn't need protection. I can't say that was easy."

May had left Taiwan at twenty-two to study in the United States and spent holidays by herself; Kit's father was never in their lives. "I knew what loneliness was all about, and I thought he needed a hobby he could enjoy on his own," she said. So she started him on piano lessons when he was five, even though she had no interest in music. At his first lesson, Kit watched the teacher reading music, and when he came home, he made his own staff paper and began to compose without an instrument: the written language of music had come to him whole. May bought a used piano, and Kit sat at it all day. He could hear something once on the radio and play it back.

May enrolled him in school. "The other mothers said they wanted their kids to grow up in kindergarten," she said. "I wanted mine to grow down. His teachers said he let other children push him around, so I went in one day and saw another child snatch a toy away from him. I told him he should stand up for himself, and he said, 'That kid will be bored in two minutes, and then I can play with it again. Why start a fight?' So he was wise, already. What did I have to teach this kid? But he always seemed happy, and that was what I wanted most for him. He used to look in the mirror and burst out laughing."

By the end of second grade, Kit had completed high school math; at nine, he was ready to start college. May speculated that Utah would be a clean, safe place for a nine-year-old to start his undergraduate education, so they went there. "The other students often thought it was strange that he was there," May said, "but Kit never did." His piano skills, meanwhile, had advanced enough so that he had been taken on by management.

When Kit was ten, he toured the physics research facility at Los Alamos with his manager, Charles Hamlen. A physicist took Hamlen aside and said that, unlike the postdoctoral physicists who usually visited, Kit was so bright that no one could "find the bottom of this boy's knowledge." A few years later, Kit won a residency at MIT, where he helped edit papers in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. "He just understands all things," May said to me, almost resigned. "Someday, I want to work with parents of disabled children, because I know their bewilderment is like mine. I had no idea how to be a mother to Kit, and there was no place to find out."

May moved them to London to be with a piano teacher Kit liked, even though she had no working papers and couldn't secure a job there. "I wasn't happy about it," May said, "but I felt I had no choice." Kit soon met the revered pianist Alfred Brendel, and Brendel, who had never had a student, took Kit on. He refused payment for lessons, and when he learned that Kit was practicing at a piano showroom because May couldn't afford a decent piano, he had a Steinway delivered to their flat. When Kit was thirteen, an English journalist who was fervently opposed to the promotion of children as performers went to one of his concerts. "His playing was so cultured, his joy in performing so obvious, his commitment as he stretched his small frame to reach the low notes so total, that my objections seemed mean-spirited," the journalist wrote in the Guardian Guardian.

May credits Brendel for Kit's musicianship. "I still don't have a good enough ear to be any help to Kit," she said. "All I can do is remind him that he didn't do anything to deserve being who he is." May restricted Kit's schedule and media exposure through his adolescence, allowing him to do only a dozen concerts a year. "But now, Mr. Brendel has said he is ready for a full concert schedule, and he's eighteen, and it's not up to me. I'd have preferred that he be a professor of mathematics. It's a better life, without so much travel. But Kit has decided that mathematics is his hobby, and the piano is his work." Kit is pursuing an MA in pure mathematics in Paris; he says he does it "to unwind." I asked May if she ever worried that Kit, like many young people of remarkable ability, might have a nervous breakdown. She laughed. "If anyone's going to have a nervous breakdown in this setup," she said, "it's me!" Like many parents of exceptional children, May scaled back her own ambitions. She had hoped for an important job after she earned her PhD in economics-the PhD she never completed because Kit came along. "As a parent, and as a Chinese mother, sacrifice is part of the game," she said. "I would love to learn how to sacrifice joyfully, but so far I don't have that ability. Here I am, middle-aged and riding around Paris on a bike, panting and out of breath. What happened? But I admit he's given me a fascinating life."

Prodigies are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act; there is no federal mandate for gifted education. But if we recognize the importance of special programs for students whose atypical brains encode less accepted differences, we should extrapolate to create programs for those whose atypical brains encode remarkable abilities. Daniel Singal wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, Atlantic Monthly, "The problem is not the pursuit of equality but the bias against excellence that has "The problem is not the pursuit of equality but the bias against excellence that has accompanied it." Writing in accompanied it." Writing in Time Time in 2007, the educator John Cloud faulted the "radically egalitarian" values underlying the No Child Left Behind Act, which provides little support for gifted students. The 2004 in 2007, the educator John Cloud faulted the "radically egalitarian" values underlying the No Child Left Behind Act, which provides little support for gifted students. The 2004 Templeton National Report on Acceleration Templeton National Report on Acceleration asserts that the school system is designed to hold back children of remarkable abilities. Once again, it falls to parents to advocate for their children's needs, often in the face of a hostile or indifferent educational system. Leon Botstein remarked drily, "If Beethoven were sent to nursery school today, they would medicate him, and he would be a postal clerk." asserts that the school system is designed to hold back children of remarkable abilities. Once again, it falls to parents to advocate for their children's needs, often in the face of a hostile or indifferent educational system. Leon Botstein remarked drily, "If Beethoven were sent to nursery school today, they would medicate him, and he would be a postal clerk."

The rhetoric of antielitism that has fueled American politics and its culture wars over the past generation reflects a bias toward extraordinary people who can pass for ordinary. This bias is portrayed as democratic, when it is often dishonest; it smacks of dreary assimilationism, echoing misguided efforts to make gay kids act straight. Many gifted children choose between being ostracized and going underground; many disidentify, attempting to seem less accomplished for the sake of peer approval. One survey of super-high-IQ students showed that four out of five were constantly monitoring themselves in an attempt to conform to the norms of less gifted children; in another study, 90 percent were unwilling to be identified as part of the "brain" crowd.

It used to be believed that academically promoting prodigies damaged them socially-even though many were already ostracized for their abilities. Several parents joked about the fact that their children's friends were in their seventies; Robert Greenberg said that Jay socialized primarily online, where no one knew his age. The Internet has given prodigies a society, just as it has other identity communities-a place where they can connect with like-minded people and underplay potentially alienating differences.

In the 1990s, Miraca Gross studied children who were radically accelerated, starting college between eleven and sixteen. None regretted the acceleration, and most had made good and lasting friendships with older children. By contrast, gifted children stuck with age peers experienced rage, depression, and self-criticism. Today, most gifted programs keep children in an age-based setting some of the time and a skills-based setting the rest of the time. Neither affords a perfect fit. The mathematical prodigy Norbert Wiener wrote that the prodigy knows "the suffering which grows from belonging half to the adult world and half to the world of the children about him." He explained, "I was not so much a mixture of child and man as wholly a child for purposes of companionship and nearly completely a man for purposes of study."

Two distinct kinds of young people are grouped under the prodigy prodigy rubric: the driven, single-minded baby virtuoso, and the youth who loves music in his bones and therefore has a better shot at a sustained career. The latter kids are more broadly intelligent, curious, often articulate, and possessed of a sense of humor and perspective about themselves. They pursue some semblance of normal sociability during adolescence and end up going to college instead of conservatory. Being pragmatic, smart, poised, and healthy is in their makeup, just as their musical enthusiasm and aptitude are. rubric: the driven, single-minded baby virtuoso, and the youth who loves music in his bones and therefore has a better shot at a sustained career. The latter kids are more broadly intelligent, curious, often articulate, and possessed of a sense of humor and perspective about themselves. They pursue some semblance of normal sociability during adolescence and end up going to college instead of conservatory. Being pragmatic, smart, poised, and healthy is in their makeup, just as their musical enthusiasm and aptitude are.

Joshua Bell is good at everything. He is the most prominent violinist of his generation; placed fourth in a national tennis tournament when he was ten; is the all-time high scorer on several video games; is one of the fastest solvers of the Rubik's Cube; holds an appointment in the MIT Media Lab; and is truly funny when he appears on the talk show circuit. He's handsome, charming, and seems riveted by whomever he's talking to, yet he also evinces the impenetrability of someone who wants privacy in the public eye. People meeting him for the first time are amazed at how accessible he is, and people who have known him forever, at how unknowable he is.

Josh's parents were not an obvious match; when they met, Shirley was fresh from a kibbutz, and Alan was an Episcopal priest. Alan left the ministry, earned a doctorate in psychology, and took a senior position at the Kinsey Institute for sex research in Bloomington, Indiana. "He was so nonjudgmental versus me," Shirley recalled. "I knew the answers to everything." Shirley is a strong presence with a disregard for boundaries. She wants to feed you, drink with you, play poker with you, sit up late talking. Dark, lithe, and pretty, she appears immensely powerful and touchingly vulnerable-willing to be honest with anyone else to the exact extent that she is honest with herself.

Alan had been a choirboy and Shirley played piano; their children would all learn music. Josh was born in 1967. At two, he stretched rubber bands from knob to knob on a dresser, pulling out the drawers to vary the tensions and create different sounds when he strummed them; as an adult he joked that he had progressed "from credenza to cadenza." He started violin at four, learning new music quickly. "It goes in one ear and it just stays there," Shirley said. Music became a world they shared intimately, but his creativity was always tinged with sadness. "He would wake up in the night crying," she went on. "My other kids, I could always hug and console. But with Josh, there was nothing I could do."

Josh became a local celebrity at seven, when he played the Bach Double Concerto alongside his teacher with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. His playing was elegiac, but lacked technical mastery. "My mother, even though she was invested and practiced with me, was not a great disciplinarian, and neither was my father," he said. "I crammed for tests the morning of the test, and crammed for concerts the day before, and lived by the seat of my pants. I sometimes went days without touching the violin at all, sneaking out the back door of the music building when I was supposed to be practicing, playing video games all afternoon, and rushing back for my mother to pick me up." In hindsight, he believes this lack of supervision was beneficial. "Doing nothing but music is not so good for your mental health," he said, "and it's not so good for the music, either." Orchestra. His playing was elegiac, but lacked technical mastery. "My mother, even though she was invested and practiced with me, was not a great disciplinarian, and neither was my father," he said. "I crammed for tests the morning of the test, and crammed for concerts the day before, and lived by the seat of my pants. I sometimes went days without touching the violin at all, sneaking out the back door of the music building when I was supposed to be practicing, playing video games all afternoon, and rushing back for my mother to pick me up." In hindsight, he believes this lack of supervision was beneficial. "Doing nothing but music is not so good for your mental health," he said, "and it's not so good for the music, either."

The summer he was twelve, Josh attended Meadowmount, a summer intensive program for string players, where he had his first lessons with Josef Gingold, one of the twentieth century's greatest violin teachers. The Bells asked him to take on Josh as a full-time pupil. "They were always supporting my education," Josh said. "If my mother had been hands-off, I wouldn't have developed as a musician-at least not in the same way."

Shirley read about a competition sponsored by Seventeen Seventeen magazine for high school musicians; having skipped a year of school, Josh just barely qualified. Shirley was too fretful to accompany him there. "When I got the phone call that he won, I screamed," she recalled. Then she sighed. "I loved having children. My kids became my life. But my youngest daughter was neglected. If Josh was performing on her birthday, we'd be at Josh's concert. I was on tour with Josh when she was growing up and didn't hear her screams inside. But gifted children have needs, too, and who's going to meet them?" The problem was not just time allocation. "I received such tremendous joy from Josh's music," Shirley said. "Every success he had gave me pleasure. The other kids could see that, and it hurt them." Josh has his own regrets about the effect his career had on his sisters, but feels that his mother's involvement was so crucial "that there was almost no way around it." magazine for high school musicians; having skipped a year of school, Josh just barely qualified. Shirley was too fretful to accompany him there. "When I got the phone call that he won, I screamed," she recalled. Then she sighed. "I loved having children. My kids became my life. But my youngest daughter was neglected. If Josh was performing on her birthday, we'd be at Josh's concert. I was on tour with Josh when she was growing up and didn't hear her screams inside. But gifted children have needs, too, and who's going to meet them?" The problem was not just time allocation. "I received such tremendous joy from Josh's music," Shirley said. "Every success he had gave me pleasure. The other kids could see that, and it hurt them." Josh has his own regrets about the effect his career had on his sisters, but feels that his mother's involvement was so crucial "that there was almost no way around it."

As Josh began performing extensively, his mother worried about how he could sustain his momentum with audiences. "When he's fourteen, it's less of a miracle than when he's twelve, even though he's playing much better," she said. Meanwhile, Josh's situation at school became increasingly uncomfortable. "I had that tall-poppy syndrome," he said. "Some teachers were threatened by anybody doing something out of the ordinary, and they made my life miserable." He graduated from high school at sixteen. "It was unthinkable for me to stay home after high school," Josh said. That meant Shirley's role had to change.

"It takes two for that kind of symbiotic relationship, and it takes two to handle the separation," she said. She was pained that Josh did not want her to manage his affairs. He moved into a condo in Bloomington that his parents had bought, and Shirley went over to do his laundry, "to stay involved." Josh recalled, "Managing my life had become my mother's world. We made a separation. Then it started to feel more like we were two different people, and I could tell her about my successes, and we could behave like adults." At twenty-two, he moved in with his first serious girlfriend, violinist Lisa Matricardi. "It lasted seven years," he said. "Some of my reliance on my mother was transferred to Lisa-probably in an unhealthy way." to handle the separation," she said. She was pained that Josh did not want her to manage his affairs. He moved into a condo in Bloomington that his parents had bought, and Shirley went over to do his laundry, "to stay involved." Josh recalled, "Managing my life had become my mother's world. We made a separation. Then it started to feel more like we were two different people, and I could tell her about my successes, and we could behave like adults." At twenty-two, he moved in with his first serious girlfriend, violinist Lisa Matricardi. "It lasted seven years," he said. "Some of my reliance on my mother was transferred to Lisa-probably in an unhealthy way."

Josh earned an artist's diploma at the University of Indiana in performance, music theory, piano proficiency, and German. He soon made his Carnegie Hall debut and at eighteen he won the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant; his corecipient that year was Ken Noda. He now headlines more than two hundred performances a year. Additionally, he leads the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Josh was among the first classical musicians to do crossover, making a modish VH1 video of a Brahms Hungarian dance. He has bowed his fiddle with bluegrass bassist Edgar Meyer and has collaborated with jazzmen Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis. He has recorded with Sting, Regina Spektor, and singer-songwriter Josh Groban. Every one of Josh Bell's albums has made Billboard Billboard's Top 20; Romance of the Violin Romance of the Violin sold more than five million copies and was Classical Album of the Year. He has been nominated for several Grammys and has won one, and he owns a $4 million Stradivarius. "It allowed me to realize the colors I had imagined in the music I loved to play," he said. "It was like meeting the girl you're going to marry." He likes the high life and is classical music's equivalent of a rock star. But rock stars' lives don't look entirely glamorous up close. "Josh is so stressed, you can't get his attention on anything," his mother said, bemoaning that he started taking blood-pressure medication before he turned forty. I asked if the downside made her sad. "What gives me the greatest pleasure is when he calls me to ask my opinion about something, where I can still be a mother," she said. "We have a real musical connection. I have to be careful not to be too intrusive, which is my nature. I don't know him that well anymore." sold more than five million copies and was Classical Album of the Year. He has been nominated for several Grammys and has won one, and he owns a $4 million Stradivarius. "It allowed me to realize the colors I had imagined in the music I loved to play," he said. "It was like meeting the girl you're going to marry." He likes the high life and is classical music's equivalent of a rock star. But rock stars' lives don't look entirely glamorous up close. "Josh is so stressed, you can't get his attention on anything," his mother said, bemoaning that he started taking blood-pressure medication before he turned forty. I asked if the downside made her sad. "What gives me the greatest pleasure is when he calls me to ask my opinion about something, where I can still be a mother," she said. "We have a real musical connection. I have to be careful not to be too intrusive, which is my nature. I don't know him that well anymore."

When I related that conversation to Josh, he was indignant. "She knows me very well," he said. "Even now, I trust her opinion more than anyone's. When I'm planning a recital program, I still run it by her. I still want her approval after a concert. It really bums me out if I play what I thought was my best and she says she preferred the last time I did it." Josh had a son with his ex-girlfriend Lisa in 2007 and spoke about how Lisa and the baby were "basically one, which is normal with a mother and baby. When you're fifteen and your mother is still so enmeshed, it's unhealthy. When I was in my twenties, my mom was still doing my taxes." He did not consult her about his decision to father a child. "Her approval or disapproval still has such power," he said, "it's best not to let her in when it comes to some of the important things." a mother and baby. When you're fifteen and your mother is still so enmeshed, it's unhealthy. When I was in my twenties, my mom was still doing my taxes." He did not consult her about his decision to father a child. "Her approval or disapproval still has such power," he said, "it's best not to let her in when it comes to some of the important things."

Like most parents of kids with horizontal identities, Shirley fears that her child is lonely. "He has an issue with intimacy," she said. "He doesn't want anybody on his back. I know, because he doesn't want me on his back. He's totally free, joking, and very funny in public. It's humbling to be in his presence. I mean, what's going to come out of his mouth? I'm always waiting to hear. But deep down, he's a little bit of an enigma. I think that's why people are drawn to him, because they can't know him. Neither can I. I couldn't comfort him when he was an infant, and in some ways, that's never changed. I think that's part of the nature of his genius, and it breaks my heart."

The advent of sound recording in 1877 had sweeping social consequences, making music ubiquitous even for those who could neither play it nor afford to hire performers. There is nothing exclusive about hearing music today; it requires no greater skill than the ability to turn on an iPod, and no more expense than the money to buy a radio. The magnificent performances once heard only at court may now be experienced in the supermarket, in a car, or at home. Like Sign before the cochlear implant and painting before photography, live performance had a different urgency before the phonograph. For musicians interested in live exposure, these technological changes can feel limiting; for those interested in wide distribution, they can be thrilling. Although the causal relationship is more oblique, new science is clouding the future prospects of musical prodigies as surely as it is threatening the Deaf and gay cultures and the neurodiversity perspective on the autism spectrum. The arguments about adaptation and extinction are as relevant here as to many so-called disabilities.

Despite the ever-increasing number of superlative musicians, audiences who know how to listen are dwindling-because of the jarringly alien qualities of much later-twentieth-century music, the surge in antielitism, the escalating cost of concert tickets, the elimination of childhood music-education programs, and the technology-spurred dispersal of media users into small, narrowly focused groups. This crossing of arcs echoes the experience of other identity groups that are gaining acceptance just as medicine threatens to eliminate them. We have disembodied music, as so much else, in modern life. The exploitation of prodigies is part of the reembodiment of music. If you see Marc Yu perform, for example, you see a miracle child, which is very different from merely hearing his capable playing online. Justin Davidson said, "An eight-year-old communicating something live in the concert hall is bringing everything he is to that moment. A big part of that is eight-year-oldness. That's what people are reacting to. There is no abstract performance beyond what the performer does. How can you tell the dancer from the dance? You can't. And it's artificial to try." perform, for example, you see a miracle child, which is very different from merely hearing his capable playing online. Justin Davidson said, "An eight-year-old communicating something live in the concert hall is bringing everything he is to that moment. A big part of that is eight-year-oldness. That's what people are reacting to. There is no abstract performance beyond what the performer does. How can you tell the dancer from the dance? You can't. And it's artificial to try."