Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Alma Deutscher, piano concerto

I can't understand how people criticize the music she wrote when she was 9 years old for being a "pastiche" of her favourite composers.

That is an amazing talent - that a 9 year old can understand parts of the musical language of her favourite composers, and write and perform in their language in such a professional way.

(It's not actually a pastiche anyway, because her pieces really contribute a childish spirit.)

Here she was at 9 years old performing Mozart with her own improvised Busoni like cadenza.



Here she is at 9 years old performing a movement of her Violin concerto, which really is a valuable composition and performance for how it captures the spirit of being 9 years old.



Do her childhood feats mean she will become a successful composer as an adult? Will she develop a unique voice as an adult composer? Not necessarily. She might not compose anything as an adult. She might simply become a school music teacher, a piano tuner, or follow a completely different career.
She's already contributed a lot to the world just by what she did as a child (as you can see above, her violin concerto valuable in itself for its childish spirit).

I wonder if any of the insanely impressed have ordered the sheet music for any of these works and are studying them. How about you, Tyrone? No? I don't think the idea is that difficult to grasp.

OH!!!! You are trying to compare yourself to her! I'm sure you are much better than her. There, there. <pat> <pat> Feel better!

No. Ever heard the term "non sequitur"?

That's exactly what a pastiche is. Now is it impressive that a kid can do it? Sure. But I've listened to several of these videos and nothing really lingers in the mind, other than "hey, a kid wrote this". Great.

Why did you cut out my words from their context (not just from the paragraph but even from the sentence). By doing that, the quote lost all its meaning. Then you reply by answering something I didn't really say, but which you created by cutting my words out of context.

You said "it's not actually a pastiche anyway" and I said that what you described just before that statement constitutes the very definition of pastiche. Nothing was taken out of context.

This ... is .... such ... a ... silly ... Internet cat fight.

Pointless.

rmns2bseen: Is it just possible that you can acknowledge the awe these other people feel when they watch what is obviously a prodigy at work?

Slothrop & Stargazing: Is it just possible that we over-fetishize prodigious talents. So many of them actually never become Mozart. And many are destroyed by the attention/pressure they receive at such an impressionable age.

Well catfights of this sort are an Internet feature. Express an opinion that goes a little against the group mindset of wherever and soon you have a couple or more standing there with stones in their hands. I can understand the "awe" but I think it goes overboard.

Exactly. I think Mozart himself may have actually been a little damaged by that "Wunderkind" aura. And let's face it, he was exploited as a novelty. Expectations become too great to live up to when there's relatively uncritical adulation so early on.

Now Mozart and Mendelssohn did develop their talents in a great, substantial way. Others not so much. I won't pick at Korngold because I think he was unfortunately victimized by the times he lived in, in a way.

You cut the beginning of a sentence, where the rest of the sentence explained why I think there is an aspect to her work that is not a pastiche (but rather contributes something of value - i.e. the child's perspective, in this case the unusual value of very polished children's art), and then you answered the part of the sentence which you cut, without addressing the meaning of the sentence I wrote. It is pointless if you don't read the whole of the sentence you respond to, and rather cut out a few words from a sentence and answer those words instead.

Sure, child prodigies attract a lot of attention and publicity, and that is not always very psychologically healthy for them.

I don't think anyone was arguing against that. Also no-one is saying she will become an important composer like Mozart. Rather, the opposite - she won't necessarily even become a moderately successful adult composer. Anyone who follows music knows that success as a child doesn't necessarily translate into a successful adult career, and there are countless child prodigies who fail to make that transition to an adult career.

I was just saying that she is/was amazingly advanced for her age - and that we are talking about a composition by a 9 year old. In my opinion, the value of her work is that her music is not just a pastiche of adult composers (although that is part of what she is doing), but that it conveys a spirit of childhood.

Over-fetishize. Hardly. I grew up with people of prodigious talents, albeit in another field. I started a company with a guy who was working on his Masters but wasn't old enough for a driver's license. I myself only spent a year in high school. People with prodigious talents abound. Alma is completely on another level. And I think those who have hung around lots of folks with prodigious talents understand this the best.

Those of us in the riff raff category can’t really appreciate Alma as well as the prodigious can ? As one of the riff raffers with no prodigious ability (I attended all 4 years of high school), I can appreciate her music. Guess it is a genetic flaw I should have tested but then none of my friends are prodigious, either. We’re just the unworthy plodders who surely can’t understand someone who is gifted. So the superior people with superior friends can just carry on with their prodigious understanding of the world.

This girl is almost a polarizing as Greta Thunberg, both in musical circles and beyond, thanks to the 60 Minutes piece. I got into all sorts of trouble on some Facebook group, Piano Pedagogy or something, when I politely pointed out that the extemporization she did towards the end of the segment, which everyone seems to have ooo'd and ahh'd about, did not actually use the notes she drew from the hat. The actual notes were B (natural), A, Eb, G. The notes she used for the improvisation, were B flat, A, Eb, G, which of course made things quite a bit easier because the new set is diatonic to G minor. Well this observation appears to have caused severe damage to the delicate psyches of a large percentage of the group, who were all, "She's just a kid," "Leave her alone," "Pick on someone your own size," "Can't you just enjoy watching a prodigy without finding flaws?" etc., etc. And those were just some polite examples. I was genuinely shocked at the hostility that was unleashed on me, in spite of being very familiar with internet flame wars and the natural tendency of online forums to foment abusive attacks for the smallest of reasons.

Of course, I then made the huge mistake of trying to explain why it was in fact significant that she made the change. One of my points was that the original pitch set (I'm using the term loosely) presents quite challenging problems as the basis for an improvisation in the attenuated Classical idioms that Alma seems most comfortable with. If she could have turned it into a Schumannesque miniature, or better still, used Brahms as her stylistic model, she could have kept the B natural and made the motif work. With a bit more experience and a better understanding/comfort level with Brahmsian harmony and texture, I have no doubt she could have produced something really brilliant. I made it clear that I thought her on-the-fly musical creation was impressive in its own right (without mentioning that you can do pretty much anything using an Alberti bass). I really do believe that she demonstrated a quite prodigious talent that is further borne out by some of her compositions, including the piano concerto. However, my biggest mistake was to post a short video clip to demonstrate what she might have done instead, whereupon the hounds of hades (can't say the English word) came at me with such ferocity that I could almost literally feel their teeth at my throat.

So why tell this long-winded story? Well, partly because I was disappointed that I was set upon simply because I was making comments about a kid, as though that's some kind of sacrilege. (By the way, I know I'm not the only person who's got into serious hot water for doing the same thing.) Also because there was absolutely nothing personal about what I said, certainly nothing that could be construed as a criticism of Alma herself or even her abilities. Most of all, however, I think the public's propensity to idolize prodigies needs to be tempered with some objectivity and that people who provide an occasional reality-check should not be vilified for doing so. Alma's tweak of the motif was the musical equivalent of a white lie and, if I remember correctly, she didn't own up to it at the time. In the grand scheme of things, this is a tiny blip on a huge radar screen, but the fact that it happened on national TV and that the whole purpose was to demonstrate the prodigiousness of her ingenuity and creativity renders the deception a tad more serious than if she'd done it in a different, less public context. I'm kind of impressed that she was able to recognize the problem of the B natural so quickly and solved it so adroitly. But I really, really do not believe that gently mentioning that what she did wasn't exactly what she was claiming to do or what pretty much everyone watching thought she was doing merits the virtual equivalent of an online death sentence. Having children of my own, I recognize how natural it is to be sentimental about kids, but this really isn't about that, nor should it be.

Well, apologies on my part, for contributing to another flame war about her.

To return to the topic: Here is a BBC documentary from 2017:

The ellipsis did absolutely nothing to change the meaning of what you said. I'm a little weary of the "I was taken out of context" line, whether on the Internet or in "real life". The gist of it all is that nobody had the right to criticize the work of a kid. If you do, it's because you're jealous of their talent. Or there's the old fallacious warhorse "well can you do any better?" I beg to differ.

Well, that's pretty much what rmns2bseen was saying. Seems like you guys might be on the same page after all ...

Tyrone: Are you 100% comfortable with how much this kid has been placed in the public eye? What might happen to her sense of self as she transitions to 18 and begins to lose the adrenalin of public adoration? Could it possibly cause harm? Of course, she might have written an opera for the ages by then, plus four concertos and a new world language.

Yes, any discussion of prodigy seems to bring out the harshest interpersonal exchanges. Head scratching, actually.

Yup!

And your post was a gem, BTW!

The beef I have is that none of this has absolutely anything to do with the quality of the music. It's similar in a way to the "unjustly underappreciated women composers" contentiousness. The works are then considered to be self-evidently worthy simply because of who wrote them. I don't buy that. Beethoven doesn't even get that kind of a break.