Highly proficient musicianship is hard won.
Although it’s often assumed musical ability is inherited, there’s abundant evidence that this isn’t the case.
While it seems that at birth virtually everyone has perfect pitch* the reasons that one child is better than another are motivation and practice.
Highly musical children were sung to more as infants and more encouraged to join in song s as kids than less musical ones, long before any musical ability could have been evident.
Studies of classical musicians prove that the best ones practiced considerably more from childhood onwards than ordinary orchestral players, and this is because their parents were at them to put in the hours from a very young age. The same was true of children selected for entry to specialist music schools, compared with those who were rejected. The chosen children had parents who had very actively supervised music lessons and daily practice from young ages, giving up substantial periods of leisure time to take the children to lessons and concerts.
The singer Michael Jackson’s story, although unusually brutal and extreme, is illuminating when considering musical prodigy (天才) . Accounts suggest that he was subjected to cruel beatings and emotional torture, and that he was humiliated (羞辱) constantly by his father.
What sets Jackson’s family apart is that his father used his reign of terror to train his children as musicians and dancers. On top of his extra ability, Michael also had more drive. This may have been the result of being the closest of his brothers and sisters to his mother.
"He seemed different to me from the other children - special," Michael’s mother said of him. She may not have realised that treating her son as special may have been part of the reason he became like that. All in all, if you want to bring up a Mozart or Bach, the key factor is how hard you are prepared to crack the whip.
Thankfully, most of us will probably settle for a bit of fun on the recorder and some ill-executed pieces of music on the piano from our children.

Highly proficient musicianship is hard won. Michael’s extra drive for music was partly due to the fact that he was （）by his mother.

Highly proficient musicianship is hard won.
Although it’s often assumed musical ability is inherited, there’s abundant evidence that this isn’t the case.
While it seems that at birth virtually everyone has perfect pitch* the reasons that one child is better than another are motivation and practice.
Highly musical children were sung to more as infants and more encouraged to join in song s as kids than less musical ones, long before any musical ability could have been evident.
Studies of classical musicians prove that the best ones practiced considerably more from childhood onwards than ordinary orchestral players, and this is because their parents were at them to put in the hours from a very young age. The same was true of children selected for entry to specialist music schools, compared with those who were rejected. The chosen children had parents who had very actively supervised music lessons and daily practice from young ages, giving up substantial periods of leisure time to take the children to lessons and concerts.
The singer Michael Jackson’s story, although unusually brutal and extreme, is illuminating when considering musical prodigy (天才) . Accounts suggest that he was subjected to cruel beatings and emotional torture, and that he was humiliated (羞辱) constantly by his father.
What sets Jackson’s family apart is that his father used his reign of terror to train his children as musicians and dancers. On top of his extra ability, Michael also had more drive. This may have been the result of being the closest of his brothers and sisters to his mother.
"He seemed different to me from the other children - special," Michael’s mother said of him. She may not have realised that treating her son as special may have been part of the reason he became like that. All in all, if you want to bring up a Mozart or Bach, the key factor is how hard you are prepared to crack the whip.
Thankfully, most of us will probably settle for a bit of fun on the recorder and some ill-executed pieces of music on the piano from our children.