The 12-year-old prodigy whose "first language" is Mozart

[V0RT3X]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-12-yea ... is-mozart/

Seems this kid was born to make classical music.

<--- Her youtube channel.

Below is an article about her from CBS.


Alma Deutscher was playing piano and violin by the time she was 3 years old and wrote her first opera at 10. For her, making music seems as natural as breathing

We cannot explain what you are about to hear. Science doesn't know enough about the brain to make sense of Alma. Alma Deutscher is an accomplished British composer in the classical style. She is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin. And she is 12 years old. She's different from other prodigies we have known, because at the age of ten she wrote an opera, which demands comprehensive mastery; not just how to play the piano, but, what is the range of the oboe? What can a cellist play? We don't know how she understands it all. It seems that Alma was born that way.

alma-and-pelley.jpg
Correspondent Scott Pelley and Alma Deutscher

CBS News
Scott Pelley: What is your earliest musical memory?

Alma Deutscher: I remember that when I was three, and I listened to this really beautiful lullaby by Richard Strauss, and that was when I really first realized how much I loved music. And I asked my parents, "But how can music be so beautiful?"

Those notes of Richard Strauss ignited a universe. At three, Alma was playing piano and violin.

Scott Pelley: When did the composing begin?

Alma Deutscher: When I was four, I just had these melodies and ideas in my head, and I would play them down at the piano. And sometimes my parents would think that I was just remembering music that I'd already heard before. But I said, "No, no, these are my melodies, that I composed."

"For me, it's strange to walk around and not to have melodies popping into my head."

This past summer, in Austria, we watched Alma prepare her violin concerto and the premiere of her piano concerto. Joji Hattori conducts the vienna chamber orchestra.

That night, the soloist was the composer herself. Remember, she wrote all the notes for all the instruments.

We could see, Alma was living a story.

A story of loss.

A story of redemption.

Scales of emotion beyond a child.

And yet her vision was almost like wisdom.

Scott Pelley: Do you have any idea where this comes from?

Alma Deutscher: I don't really know, but it's really very normal to me to go around -- walk around and having melodies popping into my head. It's the most normal thing in the world. For me, it's strange to walk around and not to have melodies popping into my head. So if I was interviewing you, I would say, "Well, tell me Scott. How does it feel not having melodies popping into your head?

Scott Pelley: It's very quiet in my head. I must say.

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CBS News
But, it appears, it's never quiet in hers. When she has nothing to do, the music flows from its mysterious source as fluently as breath.

Her parents, Guy and Janie, are professors. She teaches old English literature, Guy is a noted linguist. Both of them are amateur musicians.

Scott Pelley: Do you feel that there's anything about Alma's gift that you don't understand?

Guy Deutscher: We don't understand creativity. Does anyone? I mean I think that's the crux of the mystery. Where does it come from? This melody popping into your head. It really is a volcano of imagination. It's almost unstoppable.

It was Guy who taught her how to read music.

Guy Deutscher: I thought I was an amazing teacher because you know, I hardly had to--

Scott Pelley: You thought it was you!

Guy Deutscher: I thought it was me. I hardly had to say something and you know her piano teacher once said 'it's a bit difficult with Alma It's difficult to teach her because one always has the sense she'd been there before.'

Janie Deutscher: She wouldn't be able to imagine life without dreams and stories and music. That's as unimaginable to her as it is strange for other people to think about a girl with melodies in her head.

Alma Deutscher: I love getting the melodies. It's not at all difficult to me. I get them all the time. But then actually sitting down and developing the melodies and that's the really difficult part, having to tell a real story with music.

"I think I would prefer to be the first Alma than to be the second Mozart."

The story Alma tells in her opera, is Cinderella, but it's not the Cinderella you know.

It seemed demeaning to Alma that Cinderella was attractive because her feet were small so she cast Cinderella as a composer and the prince, as a poet.

Alma Deutscher: Cinderella finds a poem that was composed by the prince and she loves it and she's inspired to put music to it. And in the ball she sings it to the prince.

alma-pelley-copy-01-sub-08.jpg
CBS News
Alma Deutscher: I think that it makes much more sense if he falls in love with her because she composed this amazing melody to his poem, because he thinks that she's his soul mate, because he understands her.

Scott Pelley: Well, people can fall in love with composers.

Alma Deutscher: Exactly.

Scott Pelley: I think this may be one of those times.

They fell in love with Cinderella in its first production in Vienna.

Scott Pelley: There is another composer who had an opera premiere in Vienna at the age of 11. Mozart. People compare you to Mozart. What do you think of that?

Alma Deutscher: I know that they mean it to be very nice to compare me to Mozart.

Scott Pelley: It could be worse.

Alma Deutscher: Of course, I love Mozart and I would have loved him to be my teacher. But I think I would prefer to be the first Alma than to be the second Mozart.

In Israel, Mozart joined Alma on stage, she played his piano concerto with a cadenza. In a cadenza, the orchestra stops and the soloist breaks away in music of her own making.

Alma Deutscher: It's something that I composed because you see it's a very early concerto of Mozart and the cadenza was very simple. It didn't go to any different keys.

Alma Deutscher: And I composed quite a long one going to lots and lots of different keys doing lots of things in Mozart's motifs.

Scott Pelley: So you improved the cadenza of Mozart?

Alma Deutscher: Well, yes.

Robert Gjerdingen is a professor of music at Northwestern in Chicago. He has been a consultant to Alma's education.

Robert Gjerdingen: It's kind of a comet that goes by and everybody looks up and just goes, "Wow." I sent her some assignments when she was six, seven, where I expected her to crash and burn, because they were very difficult. It came back, it was like listening to a mid-18th century composer. She was a native speaker.

Scott Pelley: A native speaker?

Robert Gjerdingen: It's her first language she speaks the Mozart-style. She speaks the style of Mendelssohn.

Scott Pelley: And the names that you just mentioned are the ones that live for centuries.

Robert Gjerdingen: Yes. She's batting in the big leagues. And if you win the pennant, there's immortality.

The route to immortality leads through California. In December, the Opera San Jose Orchestra will stage Cinderella in Alma's American debut. She'll be the belle of the ball, on the piano, organ and violin.

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CBS News
Alma Deutscher: The piano music teachers say, "Well you must choose the piano." And the violin music teachers say, "Oh you must choose the violin." But anyway, that's better than the piano teacher saying, "You must choose the violin."

Scott Pelley: That would be a bad sign.

Alma Deutscher: That would be a bad sign, yes.

"I know that that life is not always beautiful. That there's also ugliness in the world. That's why I, I've learned, that I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place."

Fortunately she doesn't have to choose. This is her composition, Violin Concerto Number One.

Alma Deutscher: It's extremely jolly and very happy and jocular that movement. I want to make the people who listen to it laugh and be happy. The first movement of the violin concerto is quite the opposite. It's very dark and dramatic.

Scott Pelley: What does a girl your age know about dark and dramatic?

Alma Deutscher: Well yes, that's an interesting question because you know what? I'm a very happy person so I have lots of imaginary composers. And one of them is called Antonin Yellowsink.

Antonin Yellowsink, Alma's imaginary composing friend, is an insight into the music of her mind. Alma told us that she made up a country where imaginary composers write, each in his own style of emotion.

Scott Pelley: So how many composers do you have in your head?

Alma Deutscher: I have lots of composers. And sometimes when I'm stuck with something, when I'm composing, I go to them and ask them for advice. And quite often, they come up with very interesting things.

Even the real world is magical. The Deutscher's moved to the English countryside to be near a famous school of music. Alma is privately tutored and homeschooled alongside her sister Helen who also knows her way around the piano and the tree house.

Scott Pelley: I usually don't ask people your age this question, but, what have you learned about life?

Alma Deutscher: Well, I know that that life is not always beautiful. That there's also ugliness in the world. That's why I, I've learned, that I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place.

We cannot know how Alma Deutscher channels her music like a portal in time. But in a world, too often ugly, and too often overburdened with explanation, it's nice to take a moment and wonder.

Produced by Robert G. Anderson and Aaron Weisz

[garryknight]

She's phenomenal. There was a program on the BBC about her which, unfortunately is no longer available. But there are some short clips at the site that give you some idea of what she can do.

[dark water]

Thanks, I hadn't heard of her before.
Fair play, she is brilliant.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Deutscher

[Bombadil]

Someone posted a clip of her on her FB page. I really couldn't believe what I was seeing/hearing. I am not one for metaphysics, but reincarnation? Genetic mutation?

[SteveWZ]

Yea, pretty amazing.

[Syntilla]

First heard the name back in May, half-listening to Radio 3.
Completely failed to pick up on the fact she was young until the Yentob/imagine documentary.

The home video clip of her at 7, having just woken up from dreaming a duet for her opera, was pretty astounding: she sang one part while playing the other on the piano ...

Time for the rest of us to put our toys away and go home, I think.

Folks in the UK can hear the radio interview here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qtb42#playt=0h25m51s

[knowix]

Being a famous child prodigy is over-rated. She's very unlikely to have any genuine impact on music. Most likely she'll have lost interest in music by 20, or become so musically rarefied that no-one gives a damn.

Talent and skill is only half of the equation. Good judgment and enthusiastic energy is also required. And those are more easily lost.

[Hink]

Being a famous child prodigy is over-rated. She's very unlikely to have any genuine impact on music. Most likely she'll have lost interest in music by 20, or become so musically rarefied that no-one gives a damn.

Talent and skill is only half of the equation. Good judgment and enthusiastic energy is also required. And those are more easily lost.

I'm wondering if having an an impact on music really matters at all to her

[dark water]

Being a famous child prodigy is over-rated. She's very unlikely to have any genuine impact on music. Most likely she'll have lost interest in music by 20, or become so musically rarefied that no-one gives a damn.

Talent and skill is only half of the equation. Good judgment and enthusiastic energy is also required. And those are more easily lost.

Knowix - whilst your post might first appear to be one written mainly out of jealousy, I would disagree with that perception as I take your point that a large number of so-called child prodigies fall out of comparative limelight when they get older and, somewhat ironically, a newer child prodigy comes along.
Equally, whilst a child prodigy might no longer be the headline grabber they once were, often they go on to forge successful and respectable careers in music as adults.

Moreover, there are plenty of child prodigies but I would argue that this young girl is a level above them in the scope of what she has achieved so far. Furthermore, more experienced music professionals than you or myself seem to rate Alma very highly. Time will tell.

[fluffy_little_something]

Impressive kid Maybe some abnormality similar to autism, who knows...
But her talent doesn't make me like classical music any more than before, for the most part it sounds cold, constructed and boring to me. Mozart etc. may be technically sophisticated, but it doesn't touch me somehow.

I also hear stuff in my head at times, for instance earlier today in the shower, but I don't know how to reproduce it, write it down or even remember it after a few minutes. Basically all my ideas that I don't have while playing into the DAW are lost

[Hink]

Impressive kid Maybe some abnormality similar to autism, who knows...
But her talent doesn't make me like classical music any more than before, for the most part it sounds cold, constructed and boring to me. Mozart etc. may be technically sophisticated, but it doesn't touch me somehow.

I also hear stuff in my head at times, for instance earlier today in the shower, but I don't know how to reproduce it, write it down or even remember it after a few minutes. Basically all my ideas that I don't have while playing into the DAW are lost

I know what you mean and I use to think those ideas were lost but after a couple of de ja vu like moments I believe they are stored away in the depths of my memory often to come out later in an appropriate place. Now I'm not talking about about only when I sit down in front of my DAW, yes it happens there where I try something and it doesn't work in a song but it does in another song. I'm talking about those times where my mind is musically idle and something pops in, at age 58 it's not likely I'm going to have 100% recall (or any recall ) but sometimes I believe they do find their way back

[Jace-BeOS]

Reminds me of the documentary "The boy with the incredible brain". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PPySn3slfXI

Some people are born without the "abstraction layer" that most of us have between low-level brain processing and consciousness. I wish I was one of them. Then again, many of them are born with deficits, too, so really I wish I was one of the rare ones born with full access to my brain's otherwise unconscious functionality AND still able to function normally, like this man above, and maybe the girl who's the subject of this thread.

[deastman]

The story said she’s playing Cinderella here next month! I wonder if tickets are still available? I suppose it costs a fortune...

[suns-of-ain]

I can't remember the last time I felt so insignificant as a musician. She's a bona fide prodigy!

[dark water]

Going off the last few posts, actually I think that these are a good example of what might become this 12 year old girl's biggest potential stumbling block:
Whilst (nearly?) everyone will wish her well with her development, the pressure of hopefully-benign but ever increasing media exposure has a chance for taking its toll on her mental health. Some elements of physical exhaustion may also happen if she has to perform or travel a lot.

At the end of the day, she is just a young girl. Granted, her music is praised as having a maturity beyond her years. But how she handles music and how she handles life are two different things.
She, her parents, and those closest around her will need to be smart to tightrope walk around unwanted publicity, the stress of being subject to social media pressures, and the clamour of public expectation which will come with her ever growing reputation.