7/5/2023 0 Comments Music prodigy university![]() His sister’s playing is masterly, and he applauded her.”īecause of Wolfgang's apparent aptitude, Leopold, shown in this portrait, soon launched his son's music education instead of waiting until the boy was 8.īeing paired with a skilled musician on stage can be an intense and transforming experience. He is a child of spirit, lively, charming. ![]() ![]() “The poor little fellow plays marvelously. “The little child from Salzburg and his sister played the harpsichord,” Count Karl von Zinzendorf wrote in his diary, which is cited in Otto Erich Deutsch’s Mozart: A Documentary Biography. In 1762, Maria, 11, and Wolfgang, 6, traveled to Munich to play for Elector Maximilian III. That education continued as the children began performing together. She showed him that music is not only fun, but a way to communicate without words.” “Nannerl probably interpreted for Wolfgang and reinforced for Wolfgang what Leopold was trying to teach. “Nannerl was of an age where she understood and was more aware of what her father was doing,” says Noel Zahler, director of the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University. Wolfgang’s early musical start also had the benefit of two teachers, his father and his sister. “An early start seems to rewire the brain more dramatically,” Schlaug says. He and his colleagues have found remarkable differences between the brains of professional musicians and nonmusicians the most pronounced differences showed up in musicians who began their training before age 7. Those three years could have made a real difference in Wolfgang’s brain development, says Gottfried Schlaug, director of the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Because of Wolfgang’s apparent aptitude, Leopold soon launched his son’s music education instead of waiting until the boy was 8. ![]() “‘This minuet and trio were learned by Wolfgang in half an hour, at half-past nine at night on the 26th of January 1761, one day before his fifth birthday,’” Leopold jotted in Nannerl’s music book, according to Maynard Solomon’s Mozart: A Life. Wolfgang’s early forays into music-making took his father by surprise. “Young Wolfgang was probably impressed by that and inspired to play.” “Over time, Nannerl’s playing became more and more brilliant, her technique perfect,” Rieger says. After a few years, Wolfgang tried to play sections from Maria’s music book. She progressed quickly, with 3-year-old Wolfgang often at her side. Leopold Mozart, a court musician, began teaching Maria Anna, his first-born child, to play harpsichord when she was 8 years old. “Musicians learn by watching other musicians, by being an apprentice, formally or informally.” Being in a musical family with a musical sibling, in particular, can heighten one’s musical interest, expertise and musical drive, Jackson says. “No musicians develop their art in a vacuum,” according to Stevan Jackson, a musical sociologist and anthropologist at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. “I’m not sure there is evidence that the dynamic was in any way exceptional beyond what you might think between one relatively talented musician and one who far outshines the other.” “To answer the question of how much Nannerl influenced Wolfgang musically, I would say not at all,” says Cliff Eisen, professor of music at King’s College in London and editor of the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Such a suggestion may seem far-fetched to Mozart fans and scholars. “I’ve never really considered that possibility, and I don’t know of anyone who has before.” “That’s a very interesting question,” says Eva Rieger, retired professor of music history at the University of Bremen and author of the German-language biography Nannerl Mozart: Life of an Artist in the 1800s. But as one of Wolfgang’s earliest musical role models, does history owe her some measure of credit for his genius? The young virtuoso, nicknamed Nannerl, was quickly overshadowed by her brother, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, five years her junior. “What it all amounts to is this, that my little girl, although she is only 12 years old, is one of the most skillful players in Europe.” “My little girl plays the most difficult works which we have … with incredible precision and so excellently,” her father, Leopold, wrote in a letter in 1764. ![]() When she toured Europe as a pianist, young Maria Anna wowed audiences in Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, the Hague, Germany and Switzerland. “Virtuosic.” “A prodigy.” “Genius.” These words were written in the 1760s about Mozart-Maria Anna Mozart. ![]()
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