Ask An Expert: Think of the Children

We got a great question this week from Chris Larson, who may or may not be aware that his query ties in perfectly with our ItC season theme of child prodigies, boy wonders, call 'em what you will...

Q: Many of the most successful performers (and composers) start seriously pursuing music at a very young age, often at their parents urging. Do you think it's fair for parents to push their young children towards a career in music so early on? And conversely, do you think there's a certain age at which it is "too late" to start a career in music?

Back when I was a kid, a violin teacher named Kay Slone, who specialized in the popular Suzuki Method of childhood music instruction, wrote a book called They're Rarely Too Young and Never Too Old To Twinkle. (The Twinkle part refers to the tune, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," which is the first actual piece of music every Suzuki student learns to play.) The book reflected the inherent optimism of the teaching method, which was developed by a Japanese teacher in the dark days following World War II, as a way to put smiles on the faces of traumatized Japanese children struggling in a war-ravaged country.

In developing his method, Dr. Suzuki, who had been trying to learn the German language as an adult with great difficulty, latched onto the realization that infants and young children grasp their mother tongue with a speed and cognitive strength that adults can never match. He reasoned that many of the complicated muscle movements and cognitive abilities required to play a musical instrument could, perhaps, also be taught more readily to children if the style of teaching approximated the way a child learns to speak. So Suzuki students learn to play music before they can read a note of it, and they learn to memorize entire books of short songs and play them on command before ever learning what a major triad or a hemiola might be.

The relevance of all this to Chris's question is revealed in the Wikipedia entry on the Suzuki Method: "Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a high level of musical achievement. He also made it clear that the goal of such musical education was to raise generations of children with 'noble hearts' (as opposed to creating famous musical prodigies.)" He also believed that in order for children to be successful in learning music, their parents needed to be deeply involved in the process, even to the extent of learning their instrument of choice alongside them, and practicing with them daily.

And this, of course, is where things can go off the rails. Parents may all be well-meaning, but not all of them are good at distinguishing between what their children want, and what they want for their children. And as a teacher myself, I can tell you that it's never hard to spot the parents who are already thinking of the day their child will be a star even as they're still struggling to learn Song of the Wind.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a parent nudging their child in the direction of studying music, even at a very early age. I also don't see anything wrong with a father teaching his son to catch a baseball while he's still in kindergarten. However, I might raise an eyebrow if I saw a father forcing a kid that young to spend three hours a day taking batting practice and running fielding drills in the hope that he might grow up to be the next Joe Mauer. I'm not a parent, but that strikes me as bad parenting.

I tend to believe that kids find their own level in the world, and while I think it's great for parents and teachers to expose them to as many new experiences as possible (how will they find out what they love to do if no one shows them the choices they have?), I've known too many brilliantly talented young musicians who burned out before they turned 20, or became deeply depressed and socially inept adults as a result of having had their childhoods effectively stolen from them by overly ambitious parents. (26-year-old superstar pianist Lang Lang is just out with a new autobiography in which he details a harrowing childhood spent nearly chained to the piano bench by his seemingly monstrous father.)

But I also know just how many of the young musicians I've known began playing music either because their parents did, or because their parents suggested it. And with few exceptions, no one forced them into some foolish pursuit of stardom, and no one made them practice 8 hours a day instead of having friends and hobbies. We grew up playing because we loved it, and to be a kid who didn't play an instrument seemed unthinkable after only a couple of years at it. Our closest friendships were forged at weekend youth orchestra rehearsals and summer music camps.

Most of us didn't turn pro, ever. Music was a hobby, a path to friendships and partnerships, but not a career goal. And that's good, because music is not only a damned hard way to make a living, but too many professional musicians find their love of the craft diminishing with the daily grind. And that's where the second part of Chris's question comes in and clashes with the first part: yes, you can be too old to have a realistic shot at a career in classical music. And if you're a string player, the cutoff age, when you absolutely need to have gotten a good start, is probably around age 10. (It's a few years later for winds, brass, and percussion, but starting earlier is almost always better.) Most of us who play in major orchestras started way earlier than that - I was 4 when I got my first violin. (My parents would want me to add that it was entirely my idea.) And that's where Dr. Suzuki was dead on: it's just far, far easier to learn the basics of playing an instrument while your brain is still conditioned to be learning everything about the world.