Off the Charts
Page 40
“my hallmark”: Lang, Playing with Flying Keys, p. 55.
“It’s one of those magical places”: Steve Smith, “Pianists of the Age to Put on a Show,” New York Times, October 28, 2009.
“You should play Game Boy less”: Ann Hulbert, “The Prodigy Puzzle,” New York Times Magazine, November 20, 2005. The Davidson Institute fellows’ reception was held at the Library of Congress on September 28, 2005.
remarkable surge in classical music: Joseph Kahn and Daniel J. Wakin, “Classical Music Looks Toward China with Hope,” New York Times, April 3, 2007.
“If one word applies to Lang Lang”: “Biography,” n.d., http://langlang.com/en/me.
“never left my consciousness”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 48.
“the robot stereotype”: Mike Paarlberg, “Lang Lang with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Reviewed,” Washington City Paper, October 30, 2015.
“The Lang Lang Effect”: “Biography.”
a high-prestige extracurricular pursuit: Alex Ross, “Symphony of Millions,” New Yorker, July 7, 2008.
no choice but to comply: Michael Ahn Paarlberg, “Can Asians Save Classical Music?,” Slate, February 2, 2012.
“Mozart Effect”: Claudia Hammond, “Does Listening to Mozart Really Boost Your Brainpower?,” BBC, January 8, 2013.
pianists, chess players, athletes: K. Anders Ericsson, Kiruthiga Nandagopal, and Roy W. Roring, “Giftedness Viewed from the Expert-Performance Perspective,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 28, no. 3/4 (2005): 294–95. See also Paul Voosen, “Bringing Up Genius: Is Every Healthy Child a Potential Prodigy?,” Chronicle Review, November 8, 2015.
“10,000 hour rule”: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), p. 38.
“The scientific formulation”: Voosen, “Bringing Up Genius.”
“magic number of greatness”: Gladwell, Outliers, p. 41.
“Dear Children of the World”: Lang, Playing with Flying Keys, p. xv.
the term grit: Angela L. Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis R. Kelly, “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 6 (2007): 1087–101.
In a tell-all account: Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
talent is like sex in marriage: Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012), pp. 450–51.
“To me, the most shocking”: Angela Duckworth, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” TED talk, April 2013, https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance/transcript?language=en.
“You know, you’re no genius!”: Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (New York: Scribner, 2016), p. xiii.
“Never, never disgrace me”: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 17.
lots of other Americans, too: In Grit, Duckworth notes that, according to national surveys, Americans are about twice as likely to say that effort is more important to success than talent is. But the research of a psychologist named Chia-Jung Tsay suggests that when attitudes are probed less directly, a bias toward “naturals,” or talent, emerges. Duckworth, Grit, pp. 23–25.
“You may face a competitor”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 33.
“little emperors”: Quanyu Huang, The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014), pp. 30, 134.
The race was on to dedicate: Huang defines guan as an “incredibly important concept of Chinese parenting culture…[which] means to manage and, when necessary, to control or restrain your child—but it also means to care for and about them, to be involved and invested in their lives, and to offer protection and guidance for them.” Ibid., pp. 140–41. Yo-Yo Ma says, “One of the duties of an Oriental child is unquestioning obedience to the parents; this is supposed to continue throughout one’s life. It goes beyond obedience; the parents identify completely with the child.” David Blum, “A Process Larger Than Oneself,” New Yorker, May 1, 1989, p. 50.
anything but relaxing: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 24.
“a sensitive child”: Ibid., p. 1.
“the importance of balance”: Wang Liping and Li Wen, “Zhu Yafen: The Elegance of Piano Education,” China Today, December 9, 2014, http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/english/culture/2014-12/09/content_657660.htm.
“winning, winning, winning”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 27.
“unchallenged power”: Ibid., p. 168.
“It’s not fair!”: Ibid., p. 46.
“Achievement motivation”: Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (New York: Viking, 2016), p. 10.
“When I played the piano”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 60.
“a lost cause”: Ibid., p. 72.
“Die now rather than live in shame!”: Ibid., pp. 75–76.
“rage to master”: Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. 3–4.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading figure: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi et al., Talented Teenagers: The Roots of Success and Failure (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 215.
“make some kind of a raid”: Howard Gardner, “The Creators’ Patterns,” in Margaret A. Boden, ed., Dimensions of Creativity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 156.
“I was ten years old”: Lang, Playing with Flying Keys, p. 64.
“stuck in hell”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 79.
“was in my blood”: Ibid., p. 32.
“a golden boy who danced”: Ibid., p. 38.
“I understood at a very early age”: Lang, Playing with Flying Keys, p. 17.
“turn a child’s play”: Ibid., p. 18.
“even if my hands grew tired”: Ibid.
“autotelic experience”: Csikszentmihalyi et al., Talented Teenagers, pp. 15–16. See also Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: HarperPerennial, 2008), p. 47, and chapter 7, “Work as Flow”; Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead, 2009), p. 113.
“usually occur when a person’s body or mind”: Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, p. 3.
“my father and I shared”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 91.
“chasing the music”: Ibid.
a “midlife crisis”: Jeanne Bamberger, “Growing-Up Prodigies: The Midlife Crisis,” in Gary E. McPherson, ed., Musical Prodigies: Interpretations from Psychology, Education, Musicology, and Ethnomusicology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
“the path to success in China”: Lang, Playing with Flying Keys, p. 153.
“feverish state”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 118.
“to practice ten hours a day”: Ibid., p. 230.
“He wasn’t trying to capture”: Ibid., p. 125.
“I was meshuga”: Blum, “A Process Larger Than Oneself,” pp. 52, 61.
“practice-crazed” young pianist: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 177.
“it can’t be about the prize”: Ibid., p. 171.
“Simply concentrate on the music”: Ibid., p. 230.
“think culturally”: Lang Lang, interview by author, October 24, 2011.
“If I were not preparing for some contest”: Lang, Journey of a Thousand Miles, p. 171.
“Was I ever really a normal teenager?”: Ibid., p. 230.
“You don’t have to sacrifice everything”: Solomon, Far from the Tree, p. 449.
“Lang Lang’s avuncular gentleness”: Ibid., p. 453.
“play it forward”: Lang Lang International Music Foundation Young Scholars Program, http://langlangfoundation.org/our-programs/young-scholars-program/. Ariela Rossberg, interview by author, October 28, 2015.
“eating bitterness”: Nichola
s Kristof, “China Rises, and Checkmates,” New York Times, January 8, 2011.
“All you have to do is practice”: My Life as a Child (2007), TLC. In this six-part TLC documentary, Marc was equipped with a camera; he appears in episode 1, “Hopes and Hurdles.” For a description of the series, see Felicia R. Lee, “Children Tell Their Own Stories in New Series,” New York Times, February 26, 2007.
“As much time as an average kid”: My Life as a Child.
“My technique is much better”: Bill Whitaker, “Ten-Year-Old Prodigy Plays Carnegie Hall,” CBS Evening News, November 21, 2009.
“When I was three, I asked”: Bill Whitaker, “Concert Piano’s Littlest Star,” CBS Evening News, October 9, 2008.
a teacher can pick up on: Gary Graffman, interview by author, October 31, 2015.
“I don’t know where he begins”: Nora Zamichow, “Pint-Size, but Grand on Piano,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 2005.
a National Geographic documentary: My Brilliant Brain, http://natgeotv.com/asia/my-brilliant-brain/about.
“encourage children to work”: Duckworth et al., “Grit,” p. 1110.
grit, the key to putting in hours: Duckworth, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” TED talk.
“the diligent, disciplined”: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 8.
“soft, entitled”: Ibid., p. 22.
“weird Asian automatons”: Ibid., p. 8.
proudly contrasted fervent dedication: Solomon, Far from the Tree, p. 453.
Los Angeles Times story about him: Zamichow, “Pint-Size, but Grand on Piano.”
“My mom is my manager”: My Life as a Child.
“his protector”: Chloe Hui, “Riding Out a Tornado,” preliminary book proposal, sent to author February 29, 2012.
the risks of the prodigy circuit: Marie Winn, “The Pleasures and Perils of Being a Child Prodigy,” New York Times Magazine, December 23, 1979. She writes of a “benevolent conspiracy” among “powerful figures in the music world” to discourage precocious performance and the prodigy treatment.
occasions to discuss passion: Hulbert, “The Prodigy Puzzle.”
“growth mindset”: Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Random House, 2006).
“I want to achieve incredible things”: Whitaker, “Concert Piano’s Littlest Star.”
“can’t give up too easily”: Meera Vijayan, “A Piano Star Is Born,” Star Online, November 25, 2007, http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/entertainment/tv/news/2007/11/25/a-piano-star-is-born/.
“not-so-fun-in-the-moment exertion”: Duckworth, Grit, p. 130.
can stunt progress: Toby Perlman, creator of the Perlman Music Program, says that performing too early cramps growth. She is quoted in Lois B. Morris and Robert Lipsyte, “A Musical Dream Come True; Thou Shalt Learn to Play Without Being Tortured,” New York Times, July 25, 2002. In David Blum’s New Yorker profile of him, Yo-Yo Ma says, “One good thing is that as a child I didn’t perform much. It’s risky to create careers for ‘geniuses’ at age nine. The tendency is to make do with your technical limitations in order to get through your performances. The weaknesses then easily become ingrained.” Blum, “A Process Larger Than Oneself,” p. 51.
“The thing is,” Marc said: Marc Yu, The Thing Is, You Have to Love Music, IdeaFestival TV, May 11, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQpC2OeNP3k&feature=related.
“I think with an ordinary mom”: My Life as a Child.
a new teacher: Solomon, Far from the Tree, p. 452.
“It was so much abuse”: Chloe Hui, interview by author, July 5, 2011.
“Marc will be telling people”: Solomon, Far from the Tree, p. 452.
“I don’t want to hear the word pushy”: Ibid., p. 453.
“He was showing a lot”: Chloe Hui, interview by author, August 16, 2011.
“the toughest time of our lives”: C. Hui interview, July 5, 2011.
“its distinctive inquiry-based”: “Mission and Philosophy,” Nueva, n.d., http://www.nuevaschool.org/about/mission-and-philosophy.
“reflection [as] an essential practice”: “Reflection: An Essential Practice for Learning,” January 29, 2016, Nueva, http://www.nuevaschool.org/news/nueva-now/1418-reflection-an-essential-practice-for-learning.
“so exciting!”: Marc Yu, interview by author, August 16, 2011.
“Shut up, Mom!”: Chloe Hui, interview by author, March 2, 2012.
“an inherently closet practice”: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 172.
She was “huggy”: Amy Chua, interview by author, May 31, 2011.
“you’re diseased”: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 173.
“I HATE YOU”: Ibid., p. 205.
“I don’t want you controlling”: Ibid., p. 221.
“We cried over each other’s shoulders”: Chloe Hui, email to author, July 22, 2011.
“all the yelling, screaming”: C. Hui interview, August 16, 2011.
“When I was younger”: M. Yu interview.
spurred on less by Chinese-style duress: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 226.
“I am and will always be grateful”: M. Yu interview.
“To play professionally”: C. Hui interview, July 5, 2011.
“Isn’t it too risky”: C. Hui interview, August 16, 2011.
“compromised my own values”: Hui, “Riding Out a Tornado.”
“That’s going to be hard”: Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, p. 226.
“had a prodigy dropped”: Hui, “Riding Out a Tornado.”
“I feel deprived”: M. Yu interview.
Epilogue
“each child is a complex”: Julian C. Stanley and Camilla P. Benbow, “Youths Who Reason Exceptionally Well Mathematically,” in Robert J. Sternberg and Janet E. Davidson, eds., Conceptions of Giftedness (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 370.
The tiger mother’s guiding tenets: Ann Hulbert, “Hear the Tiger Mother Roar,” Slate, January 11, 2011.
the notion that a “midlife crisis”: Jeanne Bamberger, “Growing-Up Prodigies: The Midlife Crisis,” in Gary E. McPherson, ed., Musical Prodigies: Interpretations from Psychology, Education, Musicology, and Ethnomusicology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
“life with other girls and boys”: Shirley Temple Black, Child Star: An Autobiography (London: Headline, 1989), p. 313.
“So much has happened that is so intense”: Chloe Hui and Marc Yu, interviews by author, May 2, 2016. All other quotes from Chloe and Marc in the Epilogue are from these interviews.
a wider world that helps: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 185. He emphasizes that creativity thrives on inner-focused drive and on curiosity and openness to external stimuli.
“a tragic misunderstanding”: Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012), p. 441.
“chance to develop a reasonably thick skin”: Norbert Wiener, “Analysis of the Child Prodigy,” New York Times Magazine, June 2, 1957, p. 34.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
1 Courtesy MIT Museum
2 Public domain
3 Henry Cowell c. 1902. The Henry Cowell Collection, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Courtesy of the David and Sylvia Teitelbaum Fund, Inc.
4 Wikimedia Commons
5 Barbara Follett c. 1924. Barbara Newhall Follett Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Stefan Cooke
6 Bettmann/Bettmann Collection/Getty Images
7 Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
8 Copyright 2017 The Marshall Chess Foundation
9 Copyright 2017 The Marshall Chess Foundation
10�
��Photograph by William L. Klender. Permission from the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
11 Photograph by William L. Klender. Permission from the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
12 From Florida Today, October 25 © 1987 Gannett-Community Publishing. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is prohibited.
13 Courtesy of Diane Savage
14 Bill Phelps © Sony Music Entertainment/Courtesy of Sony Classical
15 Photograph by Jessica Darmanin. Originally published in Maclean’s™ magazine on September 9, 2013. Used with permission of Rogers Media Inc. All rights reserved.
16 Courtesy of Lang Lang
17 Courtesy of Chloe Hui
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint the following previously published material:
The MIT Press: Excerpt from Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth by Norbert Wiener, published by The MIT Press. Reprinted by permission of The MIT Press.
Oxford University Press: Excerpts from Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler by Katherine Talalay, copyright © 1995 by Katherine Talalay. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, USA.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Hulbert is the author of Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children and The Interior Castle: The Life and Art of Jean Stafford. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, Slate, and The Atlantic, where she is the literary editor. She is a graduate of Harvard and spent a year at Cambridge University. She lives with her husband, Stephen Sestanovich, in Washington, D.C.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!