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21 May 2024 20:14

Классная история про тестирование юного Моцарта

MOZART & DAINES BARRINGTON
( The experiment on young Mozart )

* Daines Barrington, (1727/28 – 14 March 1800) was an English lawyer, antiquary and naturalist. He was one of the correspondents to whom Gilbert White wrote extensively on natural history topics. Barrington served as a Vice President of the Royal Society and wrote on a range of topics related to the natural sciences including early ideas and scientific experimentation on the learning of songs by young birds. He designed a standard format for the collection of information about weather, the flowering of plants, the singing of birds and other annual changes that was also used by Gilbert White. He also wrote on child geniuses including Mozart, who at the age of nine had visited England.

* Mozart started gaining fame since a very young age thanks to the journeys that allowed him to display his uncommon musical skills in all of Europe. Among all the people who were able to witness his abilities, there were many who did not believe what they saw. Skeptics would often say that his father lied about his age (which was sometimes true), or that his talent derived from a pact with the devil or from the rings he wore during his public shows and that he was often asked to remove. Others would even say that he wasn’t actually a child, but an adult dwarf. It was skepticism that led English magistrate and scholar Daines Barrington to investigate. First, he asked one of his colleagues to send him Wolfgang’s birth certificate from Salzburg, which was the only document that could certify the boy’s age. He then visited nine-year-old Mozart in London and put him to several tests, such as sight-reading, playing the harpsichord, singing and improvising arias.

( Barrington has brought along the five-part open score of a new opera by a London composer. To compound the problem, two of the five lines are in the offbeat contralto clef. This is a very tough test, and Mozart not only plays it flawlessly -- he also captures the composer's tempos, dynamics, and musical intentions. Barring-ton goes on for two pages explaining the complexity of the feat to the non-musician readership of the Royal Society.

The test continues. Next he asks young Wolfgang if he'd be good enough to improvise a love song. The child gives him an arch look, as though to say, "Ask me something hard," and he continues to create a complete piece with recitative and two movements.

Could you then, asks Barrington, compose me a song of rage? This time, Mozart tears into the keyboard like a child possessed -- standing up from his bench and hammering the keys with small fingers that can scarcely reach the interval of a fifth.

The playing comes to an abrupt halt when a cat enters the room. Mozart suddenly leaps up to run after it. No more harpsichord for a while. As Barrington talks with the father, Mozart finds a stick, which he makes into a hobbyhorse. He gallops back and forth through the room ).

* The child brilliantly passed every test, much to Barrington’s amazement, and the magistrate later published his conclusions in Philosophical Transactions through the Royal Society. He confirmed that the child possessed premature and incredible talents that he compared to the “ability to simultaneously read in Greek, Hebrew and Etruscan”.