Talent vs Passion and Work
I am a fairly uneducated person looking for some educated viewpoints on a question that has been bugging my mind for several weeks. My question is how can someone with very little natural talent at something they enjoy ever hope to reach the level of someone who does have that innate talent. For instance if a person who is tone deaf wishes to become the best in the world at their instrument of choice can they ever hope of reaching that goal? Is it a attempt in vain? How can one with a passion wrap their head around the fact that no matter how hard they work at something they may never reach the level of Mozart or Beethoven.
Comments (18)
A person that is passionate about a subject will find joy in pursuing that subject no matter their level of skill.
It is odd that you mention Beethoven and Mozart. As I understand it Beethoven had to work very hard to write his music, while it came much more easily to Mozart.
I agree with you. It's funny, because I consider Beethoven superior to Mozart. I would venture to say a wide swath of the classical community would agree. With artists, you can see a pattern of what you describe: the importance of hard work. The same can be said for the dichotomy between Ravel and Debussy. Ravel put out a minuscule amount of music because he was such a perfectionist. And it shows. He considered himself a failure at the end of his career. In further contrast, you have their contemporary Scriabin who was one of the most celebrated composers in Russia during his lifetime, and he put out loads of music... and immediately afterwards he fell into obscurity (granted that might have had to do with the political climate at the time too). I do like Scriabin and Debussy though.
If you want another example of a relentlessly hard working artist, look at Steve Reich. Granted he's had like a 50-60 year career, so he has a decent amount of output, but study the evolution of his music from start to finish and you see how intensely he focuses in on minutiae to bring his vision to bear. This work ethic inevitably causes him to move more slowly. Compare, again, to the larger output of Philip Glass, and decide for yourself who's the greater artist. And it's literally taken Reich that 50-60 year career for his vision to come to fruition. And he's still kicking; he just moved BACK to NYC after living upstate for years. There's a great documentary on him, littfamily1 called Phase to Face that you might find inspiring.
We have a Dutch saying that I like a lot more than the English equivalent "practice makes perfect". In Dutch it's oefening baart kunst, which would literally translate as "practice births art". Art where there's an art to carpentry, mathematics or cutting a ham, e.g. mastery of a trade, whatever that might be, including the Arts.
1) "Technical" skills: the knowledge of the field and the ability to use standard techniques to get the wanted result
2) Creativity: the ability to break the conventions and find unexpected/surprising solutions
3) Interior emotional source: having strong emotions that you feel the need to communicate
4) Emotional connection with the public: your emotions must arrive and create a resonance in a relevant part of the people around (this won't happen if your emotions are too far from the average person's).
I think this is normally only possible when you also have knowledge of the boundaries and therefore implies a high level of technical skill as well. Aside from the random flukes of course that accidentaly are truly creative.
Are you speaking from experience?
What part?
It depends on which level you are being creative. If you can be creative with a fine technique but you can also be creative with the subject or with some general "implicit" rule that you are going to violate.
In my view, it's hard to be creative if you are unaware of the state of the art as you're bound to repeat what has gone before. That knowledge is partly history but also music theory for instance. I can extrapolate that at least to the legal profession. Originality in that field (especially when negotiating) multiplies as a result of experience.
Blasphemy! :-O I do often wonder how Mozart's music might have evolved, had he lived beyond the age of 35. Presumably he would have interacted further with Beethoven, of whom he supposedly said, "He will make a great noise in the world."
If someone is tone deaf then they are unable to make sense of sound, pitch, and all the richness in sound. So no, if someone is so totally deficient, I doubt they can obtain the proficiency of a virtuoso (playing and composing music are different, Beethoven composed some of his best work while almost completely deaf).
It seems paradoxical to me that if someone enjoys music that they can also be fully tone death. I think that for many of us there are degrees of talent. Some do not have to work as hard as others, it just comes naturally to some. That does not mean that the person with innate talent will produce better music nor that the music they produce will be able to move us as much as much as someone else with lesser talent. I also think that some with less talent can become inspired on occasion, and produce marvelous works. Especially in music, we get those great 1 hit wonders.
I think I was just referring to your whole comment. I have to disagree; there are countless technically skilled artists who don't "break the mold" or do something new. As I read your other comments though, I see you're referring more to craftsmanship. I wouldn't say creativity requires technical skill. The combination of the two, though, is usually what creates new genres, etc. But I think "knowledge of boundaries" as you say can also come about from just being an outsider; you have a birds eye view of the imposed limitations and are therefore not bound by them simply because you aren't "in" the art form in the same way as insiders. But technical skill is definitely important.
:P Good point though!
Sure, I referred to "technical" skill first in the sense Babbeus used it, which included "knowledge of the field" and not in its common meaning. I agree that technical skill (in its ordinary meaning, that I dubbed "craftmanship" to make a distinction) isn't a requirement for creativity. Cage's 4'33 doesn't require any skill at music or composing. I do think it would be highly unlikely that someone not aware of the musical tradition and music theory would come up with it, coming from the outside. In that sense I do consider knowledge of the boundaries a requirement to be creative in the majority of cases (there are exceptions because in the end creativity isn't a hard science).
Interestingly enough, in common speech you're engaged in a creative activity when you reproduce someone else's composition (playing the piano is generally seen as a creative hobby, for instance). So the level of creativity we assumed in this thread is already set apart from common speech, even without us defining it.
Are you saying that all forms of practice lead to art? In my own experience, certain forms of practice would not spurn any original thoughts but would only result in you getting better and better at the same thing.
For an example, a carpenter who works at building chairs would not become an artist of his trade by simply building the same model of chair over and over again, but would do so by experimenting with building different sorts of chairs right?
I clarified saying that it's "art" in the sense of "mastery of a trade". Kunst in moder Dutch translates to "art" but it isn't just that. In the archaic sense (from a time where the proverb originated) it can mean "science" or "skill" as well.
But would you say that in the carpenter example, original work in the art of building chairs could be done by the form of practice the carpenter is engaged in?