/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3030704
The truth lies in the middle. There is a thing such as talent, but past a certain treshold you can get as good as the best ones in the game. Wagner, for example, was a terrible score reader, a late starter, a mediocre pianist and he could barely sing, yet his musical dramas are nothing short of miracolous when it comes to their harmonic, melodic, contrapunctual and dramatic structure.
Also it's not only raw talent, but also inclination. As a piano and composition teacher I've met countless brilliant technicians who were as shallow as a puddle. They simply could not get it, no amount of studying could have possibly resulted in an actual masterpiece, it was not in them. There are also people who are simply untalented on every possible ground. People who can't do something as simple as matching a pitch in their singing range, or to produce a melody that is not evidently derivative or aimless.
Bach was somewhat right in what he said. He certainly was an exceptionally musical person, but all of his innovations were the fruit of erudition and intense productivity. The talent is something that comes after, something that he "adds" to the music. You certainly need to be smart to a certain degree to attain this degree of erudition, but on the other side one should notice that most of this erudition adds up to effortlessness. After countless hours of practice Bach could glance at a theme and immediatly figure out everything that could be done. CPE described this ability of his father as immediate, almost improvisational. I guess it's only reasonable to expect someone to be so comfortable with so complex systems if he spends 50 years of his life frantically studying it.

tl;dr: it's kinda about talent and personality, but don't take this statement in a dogmatic way, nor expect talent and personality to necessarily match quality