Originally Posted by dcuny
Well, he was eight at the time:

Plus, his father was a professional musician, and was parading his children around Europe as musical freaks prodigies once he had trained them.
Levitin sets up a literary “strawman” so as to amplify the real point he wants to make when he knocks it down. And I think you correctly identified this. After he sets up the strawman, he says on page 194:

First there are factual errors in this account: Mozart didn’t begin composing until he was six, and he didn’t write his first symphony until he was eight. Still, writing a symphony at age eight is unusual, to say the least. And Mozart had extensive training from his father, who was widely considered to be the greatest living music teacher in all of Europe at the time. We don’t know how much Mozart practiced, but if he started at age two and worked thirty-two hours a week at it (quite possible, given his father’s reputation as a stern taskmaster) he would have made his ten thousand hours by the age of eight.

So it appears that Levitin is standing by the 10k hour theory. And I would add that the QUALITY of the hours is at least as important as the quantity of hours. Presumably, Mozart recieved very high quality instruction. So on one level, what Mozart accomplished could be expected? That is to say, take most any newborn and provide the same instruction, discipline and control that Mozart received and you may find similar musical brilliance.

I think the main point he’s making here is that the concept of the natural-born musical genius might not hold water. Rather, years of blood, sweat and tears are required (by everyone) to become an expert in music and it’s all about building strong neural networks. And that everything else being equal, those that are born into a favorable household (including in the womb) will progress faster and go further than those born into an unfavorable one.

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