READING 3 Alma: Child Prodigy

ALMA: Child Prodigy

Read the following article. Pay special attention to the words in bold. 10.4

Vienna, Austria, 2016

Alma Deutscher walks slowly to the piano, sits down, and makes herself comfortable. She raises her hands above the keys. What follows next is difficult to explain. Alma, a British musician and composer, is giving the first performance of her original opera, Cinderella. Why is this hard to explain? Because Alma is only 10 years old! If you closed your eyes, you would think the piece is being played by a mature professional musician. And, yes—she wrote every note being played by every instrument. Welcome to the world of child prodigies!

As Dr. Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College, explains: “A prodigy is . . . a more extreme version of a gifted child.” Experts agree that prodigies are so gifted that they are able to perform at an expert adult level at an extraordinarily young age.

Asked about her earliest musical memory in a TV interview, Alma said, “I remember . . . when I was three, and I listened to this really beautiful lullaby by Richard Strauss, and that was when I really first realized how much I loved music. ”

Composing her own music followed soon after. “When I was four, I just had these melodies and ideas in my head,” said Alma, “and I would play them down at the piano.” As she talked, it was clear how natural this all felt to her. She said that it was strange for her not to have melodies popping into her head.

Such a high level of early achievement is not common. Dr. Joanne Ruthsatz, who researches child prodigies at Ohio State University, believes that the number of such children is as low as one in five million. These prodigies tend to specialize in just one area, unlike ordinarily gifted children, who may have a range of different skills and interests. Alma is a musical prodigy.

Dr. Ruthsatz’s research has also led her to conclude that prodigies mainly use their intelligence to benefit society. “They have this advanced moral development,” says Dr. Ruthsatz. “I don’t have one that I am aware of . . . that doesn’t help other people. ”

Echoes of this can be heard in Alma’s interview. “I know that life is not always beautiful,” she said. “I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place. ”

11-year-old composer and musician Alma Deutscher performing during the recording of a television show in Munich, Germany