Talent? Skill? What's the difference?

In my previous blog entry, I posed the question:

What about talent? Where does that fit in the makeup of a good composer?

Here is a definition for "talent," from the online Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:

A natural ability to be good at something, especially without being taught.

Other definitions often use the word "innate," meaning "something you are born with," which means the same thing in this context as "natural."  Some of the many areas in which people are sometimes said to have talent include:

• Public speaking
• Dance
• Mathematics
• Writing
• Sports
• Being funny
• Chairing meetings
• Music

But how could anyone possibly be born with a talent for chairing meetings? you might ask, possibly with some indignation After all, babies seemingly never actually chair meetings, at least when grown-ups are around (when grown-ups aren't around, who knows what they are up to?).

Since we tend not to see babies engaging in action such as chairing meetings, writing fiction or non-fiction, composing concertos, etc., how do we know if they are born with these talents?

It would seem very difficult to establish proof of talent in many of these areas in an infant; I would suggest that they generally become evident at later stages of development (c.f. Erickson's stages of psychosocial development), after an individual has had the opportunity to develop skills relating to these areas (talent in composition generally follows the development of skills as a musician, for example).

This leads me to propose the following:

Talent must be developed in order to be manifested.

However, something that has to be developed in order to be manifested sounds very much like a skill; how is talent different from skill?

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Here is a definition of Skill in The American Heritage Dictionary:

Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.

The essential difference, it would seem, is that talent is something we are are born with, while skill may in fact be related to an innate talent, but it must be developed.

But even this does not fully clarify the difference between talent and skill, because if talent is only manifested after at least some development, then how is it any different from skill, which is also manifested after development?

Some might argue that the difference is that a person with a particular talent would require less training to develop proficiency in that area than someone without that talent.

Perhaps this is true, but the speed with which one develops proficiency in an area is also highly dependent on other factors as well, such as motivation, environment, opportunity, and instruction. Someone of average talent might develop skill more quickly than an individual with greater talent, if the first person were more motivated, and/or had better teaching.

All of this leads me to wonder if it is possible to measure innate ability, and, if it cannot be measured, is it possible to prove that it even exists?

Let's explore that.

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When we describe an individual as "talented," we often mean that they learn or develop particular skills very quickly, or do them very well, with seemingly less effort than someone else with seemingly less talent.

However, these things do not necessarily mean that an individual is talented; perhaps the so-called "talented" person learns particular things quickly or does them well because they have had more practice doing so.

Or perhaps some of the skills a person has developed in one area (e.g., bicycle racing) can be transferred to another (e.g., speed skating), and it is this that allows them to develop so quickly in the second area.

(Canadian Clara Hughes, who has won multiple medals in both the summer and winter Olympic games, is a great example of this kind of skill transference. Another example is Pierre Boulez, who quickly (while still in his twenties) established an international reputation as one of the leading composers of the Modernist era, but he has subsequently also become known as one of the leading conductors in the world.  Most of the "great" composers of classical music were also regarded as among the great performers of their time.)

As a teacher, it can be tempting to conclude that one student is more talented than another because of a difference in their rates of progress. However, because teachers have limited knowledge of their students prior to meeting them in the classroom or private studio, we do not actually know how much time students have spent developing skills in the areas in which we teach, or in cognate areas. Not only that, but we don't really know how hard students work outside of the classroom on the skills we teach, or how efficiently they are working.

While teachers often get a sense that some students seems to learn more easily or develop skills more quickly than others, the lack of information we have about their background, practice habits, and other impediments to learning (there are many circumstances in a student's personal life than can inhibit learning) gives us no basis on which to conclude that one student is any more talented than another.

A potential danger in drawing conclusions on the relative talent levels of our students when we don't really have a basis for doing so is that we might give in to the temptation of tailoring our teaching in some way to the "talented" students, perhaps because they respond better to our teaching, thereby ensuring that those who struggle continue to do so. Or, more generally, we might encourage the "talented" more than the "untalented."

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Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as talent?

I am suggesting that we need to reexamine our assumptions of what talent is, whether there is any way of measuring it, and yes, even of whether there really is such a thing as talent (as opposed to skill, which is something that very clearly exists and that can be both developed and measured).

One way to prove the existence of talent would be to establish a control group of kids who all received identical upbringing, including parenting style and values, education, and training in the arts and sports, and then measure their achievement in the various areas in which they had been trained at regular intervals to see if some were to demonstrate a significant and lasting superiority to their peers in particular areas.

I'm not actually sure this would prove anything (other than being an impossible study to conduct from a practical standpoint, not to mention the ethical/legal impediments to establishing such a control group!), because you would have to factor motivation in there as well; people learn more easily when they are motivated to do so, and there it would seem unlikely that everyone from this hypothetical control group would have a similar level of motivation in all areas.

Another way — and this has the advantages of being both feasible and legal(!) — would be to study identical twins adopted into different families to see if one twin's significant strength in a particular area is matched by the other twin. I would guess studies like this have been done, and if I find any, I will report back on a later blog.

But what about Mozart? He must have been HUGELY talented to compose symphonies when he was only four years old!

Indeed, he would have been, but he wrote no symphonies (or any other type of music) when he was four. After Mozart's death, his sister, Nannerl, wrote: At the age of five he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down (Deutsch 1965, p. 455).

There are several points to note from this statement:

1. Nannerl was writing years after the fact, at a point when her late brother was widely acknowledged as a great composer — according to Wikipedia, Mozart's sparse funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death Mozart's reputation rose substantially: Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm" (Solomon 1995, p. 499) for his work; biographies were written (first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen); and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.
   
   Nannerl also wrote that upon meeting her brother and becoming familiar with his music in 1781, Joseph Haydn said to Mozart's father: I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute; he has taste, and what is more, the greatest skill in composition (Deutsch 1965, pp. 461–462). It seems likely that Nannerl's goal in writing these statements was to document (and perhaps even embellish) her brother's greatness, and, as such, it is difficult to know how historically accurate they are.
   
   In any event, that Mozart became a great composer as an adult after having been a precociously-skilled child is not in question (at least by most people familiar with his music; Glenn Gould famously felt otherwise, arguing that Mozart died too late rather than too early (Ostwald 1997, p. 249)). What is less certain is the degree to which his youthful compositional efforts were aided by his father.
   
   
2. Nannerl mentions her brother composing "little pieces." Not symphonies. Now, admittedly, composing little minuets at the age of five (or six, some historians maintain) is pretty darn special, but did these little pieces contain the seeds of greatness he would later achieve as a composer? Or, put another way, there have been (and continue to be) many highly-precocious young kids in the world whose impressive early achievements might have been comparable in some way to Mozart's, but very few of them have come anywhere close to achieving what Mozart did as an adult. Mozart's place in music history was achieved on the basis of his compositional work as an adult, not as a child.
   
   
3. "... which he played to his father, who wrote them down." His father, Leopold (1719–1787), was a highly-accomplished musician himself — he was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, as well as a composer and an experienced teacher. If young Wolfgang played mistakes (parallel fifths, doubled leading tones, etc.) in his childhood compositions, might Leopold have corrected them in the process of transcribing them to music manuscript? Given that he was an experienced teacher (and his son's greatest advocate, AKA a "stage parent"), it seems likely that Leopold would have pointed out mistakes and ways of improving these little pieces.
   
   It is presumably for these reasons that the symphonies listed as #2 and #3 by Mozart are now listed as "spurious," with #2 thought to have been composed by Leopold.
   
   In any event, the point here is that it is hard to know the degree to which Mozart's early compositional efforts were aided by his father, and it is therefore at least possible that some of what we attribute to "pure genius" or "natural talent" on the part of Mozart can be attributed to the help received from his father.
   
   
4. And finally, although you and I were probably not composing little pieces for the piano at the age of five, we also did not have Leopold Mozart as our dad. Leopold published a treatise on violin playing the year that Wolfgang was born, and taught both of his children how to play violin and piano at remarkably early ages. He also assembled books of compositions from which to learn piano (and perhaps composition as well) for both of his children (Blom, p.11). Mozart was home-schooled by his father, and this home-schooling included much musical training. Leopold's desire to show off the skills of his children (did I mention he was a stage-dad?) is obvious from the frequent tours to perform for European royalty that began when Wolfgang was six. Given his skills as both a musician and teacher of music, and his evident desire for his children to excel at music and be recognized for it, it seems at least possible that other children growing up in that environment might also have been "composing little pieces" at remarkably early ages.
   
   To what degree were Wolfgang Mozart's childhood accomplishments the result of the intensive musical training he received, and to what degree were they a product of his musical gift or innate talent?
   
   

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Postscript: After writing the above, I was reading Outliers — The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell – mainly because I wanted to learn more about the so-called "10,000 hour rule" discussed in my Inspiration, Perspiration, and Perspicacity blog of about a month ago – and found this quote from Genius Explained, by the late British cognitive psychologist Michael Howe:

... by the standards of mature composers, Mozart's early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang's childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K. 271) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years (Howe, p. 3).

The music critic Harold Schonberg goes even further:

It is strange to say of a composer who started writing at six, and lived only thirty-six years, that he developed late, but that is the truth. Few of Mozart's early works, elegant as they are, have the personality , concentration, and richness that entered his music after 1781" [the year he turned 25]. (Lives of the Great Composers, Part 2, p. 103)

We can become so caught up in the mystification of genius that we overlook the fact that any person of significant accomplishment, even those we call geniuses, achieved what they did through protracted hard work.

I will conclude by returning to the question posed at the outset: Where does talent fit in the makeup of a good composer?

It's hard to say. I'm not prepared to say there is no such thing as talent, but I will suggest the following:

• If there is such a thing as talent, it needs to be developed in order to be manifested;
  
  
• Skill clearly exists, and can be developed through good training;
  
  
• Skill is measurable, but if someone has come up with a way of measuring talent as an independent quality from skill, I don't know of it;
  
  
• I see no benefit in concerning yourself with the issue of how talented you are, or whether you possess enough "raw" talent to achieve greatness. If you focus on developing your skills, and, if you work both diligently and intelligently over a sufficiently long period, you will become highly skilled. 
  
  
•  If you become highly skilled, AND continue to work hard and intelligently you may distinguish yourself in your field, but achieving publicly-recognized success is dependent on factors that may have nothing to do with talent or skill!
  
  
• Perhaps the main reason everyone who sets out to become highly skilled does not succeed in doing so is that many loose their motivation somewhere along the way.