Johann Sebastian Bach, of all people, is quoted as saying, "I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results." When we call someone talented, it is not only because that person has a high degree of natural ability for a particular skill but also because that person has a general aptitude for hard work. For when has one ever manifested itself without the other?
Expertise is gained only through repetition. I would like to know how common it is for one to have the natural ability required for the sake of sitting through the number of repetitions both at the keyboard and in front of the composer's desk necessary to become a composer of Bach's caliber.
About Me
Labels
- Bach
- Beach
- Beethoven
- Berg
- Bizet
- Brahms
- Bruckner
- Carpenter
- Chopin
- Debussy
- Dvorak
- Elgar
- Gershwin
- Gorecki
- Gounod
- Handel
- Haydn
- Henze
- Higdon
- Liszt
- Mahler
- Mendelssohn
- Mozart
- Mussorgsky
- Pachelbel
- Prokofiev
- Puccini
- Purcell
- Rachmaninov
- Rautavaara
- Ravel
- Rimsky-Korsakov
- Saint-Saens
- Schubert
- Schumann
- Shostakovich
- Strauss R
- Stravinsky
- Tchaikovsky
- Telemann
- Verdi
- Vivaldi
- Wagner
3 comments:
I love Bach he is one of my favorites. Yeah, Hard work and talent are both needed to create memorable works of art however, I do believe that someone that works hard but is lacking in natural ability, will never get to the icon status of some of the greats who you can tell just have/had that natural ability running through their veins. It is/was engrained in their souls. Without that love, that passion, that natural ability, all the hard work in the world will not lead one to iconic greatness....
I think it might be a useful experiment to pick some random task (e.g., juggling or solving a Rubiks Cube) for which you have no natural talent and spend a few weeks becoming an expert. I think the brain has a good deal of plasticity, and it's only in the really competitive areas (e.g., olympic swimming) where you need innate talent to have an edge.
I was reading Bob Dylan's autobiography (and no, I'm not a huge fan of Bob Dylan) and he was all about becoming a folk musician. After being obsessed with it and a lot of work, he became a folk musician. This is despite the fact that I don't think Bob Dylan has much natural talent.
Hard work can be undervalued so often. I would think that natural talent without hard work will also fail to lead to greatness.
Post a Comment