Talented. Gifted. Prodigious.
While each of these words has its own novel denotation, a common undertone is perpetuated by their nearly identical contexts. They connote the skill of an artist as automatic and innate.
These terms, once honeyed compliments, have become hackneyed and stale. They have become trite sayings overused in our performing arts industries, especially the music enterprise. They are used to describe and honor the most adroit of artists, yet they undermine the individual's endurance and journey.
I am a pianist. Scratch that, I am not a pianist; I just play piano. Yet I constantly find myself on the cusp between the lifestyle of a high school student/aspiring journalist and that of a professional musician. Almost daily, I discover myself standing in front of the hearth, ready to dive headfirst into the fire; abandoning everything I have ever known to immerse myself in the ardent passions engendered by music.
These are the fantasies of aspiring musicians: thriving at Juilliard or Curtis, collaborating with world-class artists, and performing with major symphonies around the globe. As encapsulated by the age-old adage, "a life of fortune and fame."
But the two f's come at a sizable cost.
Last summer, I was a student at a fairly well-known music festival in Massachusetts. I was the youngest performer. At 14, I became completely saturated in the alternate realm I had fantasized about for years. But its reality was completely foreign to me, a vacant stranger.
I quickly bonded with some pianists from Boston and New York. I was thrilled that they had taken me under their wing; they were graduate and undergraduate students. I had aged a decade within a few weeks. We ate meals together, performed at the same venues, and supported one another through coachings and master classes.
Yet there is one memory that continues to gnaw at my conscience. I recall the moment all too vividly, and I curse myself for the words I breathed so ignorantly. Madelyn*, a graduate student at Manhattan School of Music, had just performed Vivaldi's Four Seasons, featured as a soloist among an orchestra of burgeoning musicians from across the globe: China, Indonesia, Mongolia, and every region of the United States. Entranced by her performance and stage presence, Madelyn reaffirmed every reason why I wanted so badly to be a musician. I had crossed the threshold, eyes fixed and breathing stagnant. Madelyn seemed to transport to another world while she played, completely unconscious of the time and place. The earth had stopped spinning. After the concert, I mustered the courage to congratulate her. "Great job, Madelyn. You're so talented," I gushed, eyes bright with admiration. Madelyn replied with the perfunctory, "Thank you, so are you." We resigned to our practice rooms shortly after.
I had never intended to be disrespectful. But after two weeks, I had eliminated "talented" and its synonyms from my vocabulary. Before my experience at the festival, I had never fathomed the magnitude of challenge faced so readily by music students. The competition they greet daily with others and most notably, themselves, is unparalleled.
Most of the festival students spent between four and six hours each day practicing, antagonized yet smitten with grueling phrases and the bottomless pursuit of a musical perfection that doesn't exist--a performance free of technical errors, flawless in intonation and articulation. Each concert is critical to an emerging professional's reputation, and the journey is painstaking. The audience is offered an ephemeral glimpse into the musician's world; a whispered suggestion of the battles that were fought in practice rooms, the beasts that were tamed and conquered by brains and fingers.
Perhaps that cellist became enamored with Faure's "Sicilienne" at the tender age of nine, vowing to dedicate his adolescence and adulthood to creating something so ethereal. Perhaps that pianist fell in love with Chopin's nocturnes and practiced them until she was recognized by the conservatory of her dreams.
Talent is the product of a life dedicated to art and expression. Skill and technique are amassed after years of critical study. The musicians we laud so highly were not born with the inexplicable ability to read sheet music or identify pitches; these abilities are whetted daily and for many hours at a time.
Next time I'm in a practice room with a musician, I'll be more familiar with the scene of a masterpiece in the making: a student towered over a tilted music stand, brows furrowed and palms sweaty. I'll smile and think, now that's prodigious.
