# Does Child Prodigy = Childish music? Not in my opinion



## caters

So yesterday I watched this video from Inside The Score about Mozart. In there he says something along the lines of this:



> Even when Mozart was older, he never lost his childish side in his music, possibly because he started composing at such a young age.


Here is the video for those wanting to listen to it:





This is kind of implying that any child prodigies compose childish music. I would only say that it holds true for Haydn and Mozart, who are very similar in their style and some people even describe the friendship between Haydn and Mozart as like a musical brotherhood. But it holds less true I think for Haydn than it does for Mozart, probably because Haydn lived into his 70s whereas Mozart died early at the age of 35.

I mean, just look at Beethoven. 








He composed pretty early on in his life. He started playing the violin at 4, just 1 year older than how old Mozart was when he started playing the harpsichord. But from early on, his music has sounded serious. Nothing at all like the childish side of Mozart. Even his very first piano sonata that he composed at the age of 25 is very serious sounding. For an earlier example listen to his first composition, 9 variations in C minor, composed at the age of 10. While you can clearly hear the Mozart influence in this set of variations, you can hear sudden dynamics and sudden tempo changes being used. You can also hear parallel major minor shifts(very last variation is in C major to give a picardy third to the piece(though it is rare for Beethoven to use picardy thirds outside of symphonies)), which are very commonly used by Beethoven.

These would become ingrained into Beethoven's style so much that hearing a piece by Beethoven that has none of the characteristics of his style such as his Flute Sonata in Bb is incredibly rare and the first time you listen to it you question "Is it really by Beethoven? Especially since the authorship is unknown, maybe it was actually Haydn who composed it and it was given to Beethoven?" Here are those 2 pieces and another very well known piece by Beethoven that definitely sounds serious:

Late piece that sounds serious: 




This was composed at 54 years old, just 2 years before he died.

Earliest piece by Beethoven: 




This was composed at the age of 10 years and you can already hear his angsty side this early on in his composer career.

Earliest piano sonata: 




This was composed when he was 25 years old.

And here is a Mozart piece composed around the same time as one of these Beethoven pieces to show that child prodigy ≠ childish music. It also happens to be in C minor, what is often called Beethoven's key(mainly because Beethoven's most dramatic works tend to be in C minor). 





You can clearly hear that Mozart's C minor pieces sound way less serious than Beethoven's C minor pieces, even at the forte arpeggios. So is it really fair to imply that child prodigies compose childish music in a video that is specifically about Mozart when Beethoven is such a great counterexample to that premise?


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