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Talent is important. Work is even more important. I think we're all agreed on this point. You can't be successful with one and not the other.

Lots of us have.
I think that's essentially what we take "talent" to mean.

Perhaps some of us view talent as also including natural physical ability. But to me, it's mostly what you said up there, and I'd guess it is so for most who've emphasized talent.

You're arguing against something that wasn't said. No one has said that hard work has nothing to do with being able to play the piano at at high level. No one has said that talent alone was sufficient. What I and others said was that talent and hard work are separate and that just using the dictionary will verify this.

Many, but not all, would say that without great talent it is very hard or impossible to reach the highest level even with great persistence and excellent teaching, but that is a separate issue.

This simply means talent is not alone sufficient.

I think both those definitions indicate talent is viewed as innate.

But "natural ability" is very common English usage. If you are only capable of doing what you've already done no one could do anything for the first time. The most talented are capable of learning and progressing much faster than less talented. That is why most of the great pianists were playing so well at such a young age. Even if they started very young and practiced at lot they didn't have time to put in enough hours so that the hours alone could result in their incredibly fast progress.

No one said, as per your example of playing Liszt, that talent allows one to instantly play anything. No one says talent alone is sufficient. But some would say that talent allows one to progress much faster nad further than others with less talent.

Kissin is an example of clearly measurable talent at a young age. If you listen to Kissin talk about how he practiced as a child, it is amazing to hear how little he practiced in the beginning. Yet he, of course, progressed with phenomenal rapidity. He was singing the subjects from Bach Fugues his sister or mother were playing when he was two or three. When he was interviewed for the Gnessin school he was asked to do all kinds of things that only children with the greatest talent could do.

There are ways to test musical talent. If there wasn't how do you think schools like Gnessin decide who will be admitted?

The previous three posts are sound.

The previous 4 posts are sound.



BTW, music is sound.....most of the time anyway.

Actually, the previous two posts are writing.

Yes they are.

That's not my argument. My argument is that "talent" is a useless word to describe results, and not a clear measure of potential (which cannot, in fact, be measured). Therefore, "talent" is meaningless, and the only thing that matters is hard work and persistence.

If you can somehow develop a measure of talent, where no one in the history of the world has ever been able to do so, I should like to change my argument to be more agreeable with everyone else.

How do you think Gnessin auditions students?

Listen to this video about Kissin starting at 11:40 and you can hear about Kissin's audition at Gnessin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MunHV8eYOcM

You can also hear about how little he practiced in the beginning of his studies despite his lightning progress. If that doesn't imply talent I don't know what does. Or listen at 19:30 about how at age of 11 months he sang the theme of a Bach fugue his sister was studying.

It sounds like you want some scientific measure of talent as if one was measuring temperature or speed. That doesn't apply to musical talent or any musical performance. But that doesn't mean most can't agree who has a great deal of talent.

This is like saying there is no such thing as IQ, and thus anyone with enough work and persistence can learn and do anything.

It is hard to believe that anyone would think that to be true.

Certainly few if any piano teachers believe that talent is not an important factor in learning to play, and to play well.

I was going to make the same comparison. I'm glad you did.

Oh, no ! You have just lost a LIFETIME opportunity to learn my secret of becoming a VIRTUOSO.
OK. Joking aside, it is good to see that you are realizing that your questions are not meaningful at such an early stage.




Now, first things first. The definition. What do we (I) understand from VIRTUOSITY ?
First of all this guy is not a virtuoso. As for your question, work hard for 6-8 years and you will be as good as him. The actual time will vary according to your TALENT and TEACHER.

Hope this helps.

Out of sheer good humor, I listened to Kissin speak about his audition. It is interesting what he says. If he had been speaking about measuring "talent", he would have said things like, "She recognized that I was capable of doing [x]." But what he said was, "I was doing many interesting things, playing the Nutcracker, the 3rd Chopin Ballade, improvising. She would ask me to improvise about the dark forest and then about the bright sun, and then she would ask me to repeat what I had just played and I wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't remember anything. She wouldn't believe this, and would ask me to play another waltz or another march, and I would play something completely different."

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but absolutely none of this measures talent. It measures ability. Ability to put out what you've worked so hard for, and persisted so long at, developing.

Case in point: the closest thing in the world to measuring "talent" is called an IQ test. However, an IQ test doesn't measure what you are capable of learning (which would be true "talent"), it only measures what you have already learned on an average scale of how fast you may have learned it. If you were to ask any psychologist, they will tell you that the IQ test is insufficient to measure exactly what it was designed to measure, because what they are trying to measure cannot, in fact, be measured.

I'll use physics. Take "potential" energy, which is, for all intents and purposes, the "talent" of an unmoving object. (Closest thing to a "talented rock" I can think of.) You don't measure the rock's "potential". What you measure is, if the rock starts moving, how far it is capable of going and with what force. So, you can't even measure a rock's "talent".

"Talent" is an excuse. Like the rock, we measure how far a person goes. We measure what they've worked hard and persisted to achieve, and if they become Evgeny Kissin, we say, "Oh, my! That person is incredibly talented!" But if they don't, we say, "Oh, it's okay. That person wasn't talented enough to get there."


Two thousand years ago, a thunderstorm would ravage the Greek coast, and lightning would destroy a village. If that doesn't imply that Zeus (and the other gods) exist, I don't know what does.


If you can't measure it, then it either doesn't exist or we don't understand its principles well enough yet to define it properly.


I was HOPING someone would bring that up! Unfortunately, my patience wore out before I got to your post.. haha See above. I actually just addressed this.

This comes up in one guise or another every now and then. Taken to its logical conclusion, if all that mattered was hard work and persistence, then anyone could potentially be a Kissin.

Yet we know it doesn't work that way, and I find it extraordinary that Derulux -whose posts I generally admire- really believes that... or perhaps I'm just misinterpreting.

(Edit: my post crossed with Derulux above.)

As I said in my previous post, I do not think any piano teacher believes that talent is not an important factor in learning and playing.

First, thank you for the kind words.

To address the differences, I will say simply (hopefully) that I believe anyone can play as well as Evgeny Kissin. I honestly do. I believe that every single person has the ability to do whatever it is they want to do, if they are willing to work hard and persist.

I don't, however, think anybody can "be" Evgeny Kissin. That relies on the whim of others-- who gets sick and cancels a concert, and wham! you're in, or who accepts you to which school, or who has the greater marketability to a European vs an American audience, or whether there is enough room in the industry to support another "star", or any number of factors outside the control of the pianist. That is the nature of a subjective industry.

Ditto.
I too am having a hard time to believe that he believes what he is saying.
There might be some confusion about semantics, but more or less everybody means, some sort of special natural ability that someone is born with, when talking about talent in the musical world.

We can, in theory, measure it.

Hypothetical situation here: two students start playing piano at the age of 8. They have the same teacher. Both students remain with this teacher for five years. In this time, the students have maintained an equal passion and work ethic, but one of the students is noticeably better than the other. The kid has more talent than the other. See?

Talent just has to do with the way the brain is wired up. Everyone is different. Some people's brains are wired up to be great mathematicians, others for music, and everything in between.

Think of it like bodybuilding. An ectomorph will never be able to beat a mesomorph in a bodybuilding contest even if he worked twice as hard as the mesomorph.