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We survey three interlocking talent development models: the Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), the Developmental Model for Natural Abilities (DMNA), and their merging into a Comprehensive Model of Talent Development (CMTD). The authors use the CMTD framework to analyse the phenomenon of musical prodigiousness, defined as a quantitatively extreme level of talent (T component). We then explore the gifts (G component) that contribute to musical prodigiousness, as well as its typical developmental process (D component). Two types of catalytic causal influences are explored: intrapersonal characteristics (I component) and environmental influences (E component). Within each section, we briefly discuss the biological foundations of the various constructs. We finally integrate these five analyses into a dynamic developmental perspective and propose a tentative answer to the key question: “Which causal influences better ‘explain’ the early manifestation and development of musical prodigiousness?” In other words: “What makes a difference?”

This chapter draws on the literature on musical prodigies and prodigies in general, career decision-making theory, the development of music professionals, and the career decisions of gifted adolescents, to arrive at an overview of the unique and complex career decisions of musical prodigies. The discussion, which incorporates multiple examples from the lives of prominent musical prodigies, centers on early career-related decisions, the experience of a midlife crisis, the subsequent “mature” career decision, and some of the reasons for the eventual pursuit or non-pursuit of an adult career in music. A number of implications for research, and recommendations for the guidance and counseling of musical prodigies, are provided.

This chapter examines YouTube as a medium for accessing the videos of young music performers. Comparisons of the characteristics of prodigy performances in the past and present are explored, and the challenges of young performers described in terms of the vast number of competing high level performances that are currently available on the internet. Issues addressed include historical notions of the “Mozart figure,” notions of popularity and commercial success, adult conceptions of child-rearing practices and what is considered a “normal” childhood, and the degree to which prodigies can be conceived by adults as being able to perform emotionally and expressively at adult levels. The chapter explores some of the stereotypes and myths of the “musical prodigy” phenomenon, and comments on the stark difference between how the general public typically classifies and defines musical prodigies as opposed to scientific explanations of giftedness and talent.

The gifted and talented research literature has long acknowledged that both innate predispositions and environmentally afforded skills and competencies interact in individual progression. These components comprise physical characteristics, personality traits, general intelligence, domain-specific abilities, and all sorts of environmental factors. The authors of this chapter have conceptualized how wide-ranging conditions come into alignment to produce a unity of direction or purpose, a syzygy that supports musical development. The chapter explores the role of such alignments in the development of musical prodigies, looking especially at parental involvement, but also at gender and personal identity. Biographies of Erich Korngold, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, and Bejun Mehta are explored to consider how cultural backgrounds illuminate how syzygies have impacted exceptional musical achievements.

Prodigies of music composition exhibit a range of cognitive skills that differentiate them from other prodigies. However, there is little understanding of the nature of these skills, how they are acquired, and how they might develop. In addition to extensive musical knowledge and technical skills that also characterize other musical prodigies, the developmental transitions that occur from infant to prodigy to successful adult composer likely involve the acquisition of several personal, social, and cognitive skills. We review these skills, as well as the antecedents necessary to develop them, such as high levels of practice and social support. Finally, we propose a cognitive framework for investigating such skills and their development. We illustrate our conclusions with examples of prodigies of music composition.

Popular anecdotal accounts do not satisfy rigorous scientific standards but can be very useful for cross-historical comparisons of precocious achievements. Fortunately, more objective scientific testing using emerging psychometric methods was developed by Carl Stumpf around 1900. We will review three little known case studies of prodigies (Arriola, Korngold, and Nyiregyházi) who all originated within a scientific network surrounding Stumpf in Berlin. Here, in Europe’s musical capital, many prodigies sought instruction or tried to attract public attention. The three prodigies were not selected for their singularity. Rather, their selection was coincidental and likely due to a combination of circumstances, such as geographical location, the child’s place of residence, and the chance association with a member of the research community. Given this selection bias, we argue that many more precocious musicians remained unknown to the researchers, although they would also have displayed similar prodigious feats.

This historiometric study on the musical child prodigy (wunderkind) is based on a sample of 213 European-wide reports in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (the most important music journal in the first half of the nineteenth century) between 1798 and 1848. A quantitative analysis of biographical data revealed a mean age of 10.73 years at the first public performance (time of report). Over a period of 50 years no differences in the prodigies’ ages at the performance debut could be observed between groups of instruments (pianists, string players, singers). Data analysis revealed an increase in wunderkind reports, which reached a peak between 1821 and 1825—the historical beginning of the virtuosic era. Female prodigies performed on the piano or as singers (‘feminine’ instruments), while male prodigies played the flute, clarinet, and violin, the ‘masculine’ instruments. The association between gender and instrument choice in the nineteenth century was different compared with that today. Finally, it is argued that in every era people seem to be enthralled to the remarkable musical achievements of very young children. However, nowadays this public passion is fulfilled through viewing of television talent contests and video-sharing websites.

Entry into a conservatory program is a rigorous process whereby talented young musicians must demonstrate their abilities with confidence and grace in front of a panel of expert faculty. Among the few selected into the program, a prodigious subgroup stands out by virtue of extraordinarily advanced technique and mature interpretation of music. This chapter explores similarities and differences between the developmental trajectories of prodigies with that of “normal age” elite talent at conservatories. The special focus of this analysis is on the psychosocial factors that support the development of talent.

This chapter examines the early life and musical development of Weldon Leo “Jack” Teagarden (1905–1964), a trombone virtuoso whose unique style set an important precedent for early jazz practice. Through a close examination of his pre-professional development as a musical prodigy in rural Texas and Oklahoma, this chapter aims to show how some unique aspects of musical prodigies’ early lives can have huge effects on their later professional personas. This analysis includes detailed discussion of his innovative approach to the instrument, consideration of his marginal social position as a child in this society, and an exploration of how this peculiar positionality allowed him to develop dispositions that served him well upon his arrival in New York as a young adult professional at age 22.

Advances in understandings that the brain’s cerebellum and cerebral cortex collaborate in the development and ongoing operation of working memory offer new insights on how deliberate practice produces prodigies. Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is to describe how the cerebellum is a “master computational system” that encodes sequences of internal and external events in order to anticipate future circumstances and their performance requirements. This encoding process is described within the context of a case study of a musical prodigy. It is concluded (1) that owing to innate emotional sensitivity which accelerates attentional focus and shifting in prodigies, the cerebellum’s encoding of anticipatory information is likewise accelerated thereby producing their extraordinary gains from deliberate practice, and (2) that this first occurs during the development of unconscious working memory in infancy.

Music is intimately connected with the experience of rhythmic movement. This unique relation between music and movement depends on a complex set of timing skills that are developed throughout childhood. However, extraordinary cases of rhythmic prodigies seem to challenge our understanding of the normal course of motor development. This chapter examines the existing literature on timing skills in order to identify some milestones in the development of timing skills that are essential for the production of accurate rhythmic movements. We consider the importance of formal music training and weekly practice for the development of timing skills involved in discrete and continuous rhythmic movements, and we describe a preliminary study in which we compare the timing skills of a prodigy musician with those of age-matched musicians and nonmusicians.

This chapter is concerned with exceptional musical talent in the context of Chilean folk song. It presents the childhood musical experiences of famous Chilean folklorist Margot Loyola Palacios as a case study for considering how musical giftedness may be understood in a sociomusical context that has not previously been considered within the literature concerning musical giftedness and child prodigies. It is informed by ethnographic engagement with Loyola herself, as well as extant documentary sources in which her childhood is discussed. It aims to test the application of existing understandings of giftedness in a new setting in which the parameters for defining excellence are based more on emotive expression and memory than on technical mastery of an instrument or repertoire.

This chapter examines the work of Vernon Duke. It begins with an extended commentary of his career, followed by details on productions, with data and song information. Vladimir Alexandrovitch Dukelsky hailed from a White Russian family, the son of a civil engineer. A precocious musical prodigy, as a preteen he enrolled in the Kiev Conservatory and studied with Glière. He then emigrated to America, where he worked at musical odd-jobs. When one of the nineteen-year-old Dukelsky’s “modernistic” compositions was performed at a concert by recitalist Eva Gauthier, he was befriended by the twenty-four-year-old composer of Swanee, George Gershwin, who became the youngster’s mentor, finding him bits and pieces of work along the way.

Glenn Gould (1932–1982), the iconoclastic Canadian pianist who championed the keyboard music of J.S. Bach, was a relative “late bloomer” compared to many prodigies. Despite abundant signs of precocious talent, his parents curtailed public performing during his childhood. But the scholarships and medals he won in local competitions and in the Toronto Conservatory’s examinations led to his debut with the Toronto Symphony at age 14. This chapter traces Gould’s evolution from a conventional prodigy who played a wide range of repertoire, to a most unusual professional artist who largely bypassed homophonic Romantic keyboard literature in favour of contrapuntal music from other eras, and who stopped performing in public at age 31 to devote himself thereafter to recording, broadcasting, and writing. It explores the range of his gifts, the nature of his musical persona, and the world-view that made him the artist we know as Glenn Gould.