You don't want your student to be another Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was eight years old when he finished his first symphony; his first opera was finished when he was eleven.
By the time he was a teen, he was touring with his sister and his father. Genius.
Right?
Well, I discourage teachers from calling their students “another little Mozart” for so many reasons:
He dealt with serious health issues. Small pox, pneumonia, and typhoid fever were just a few. He likely had bi-polar disorder, though it is not possible to definitively diagnosis at this time.
Finances were a struggle. He was impulsive and overspent quite often.
Touring wasn’t easy. Today, if you left Salzburg by train at 8 a.m., you’d be in Vienna by 10:30 a.m. But in 1750, this was an arduous journey.
When his family traveled, it’s not like they jumped in the van and took off. They traveled by horse and on foot.
And if they traveled with Maria Anna, Wolfgang’s sister, or Anna Maria, Wolfgang’s mother, then dealing with their periods, protecting them from bad men, and generally trying to travel in skirts and heels and hoops was a whole different level of issues.Mozart did not work well with others. He was fired by the Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg, and struggled as a freelance composer in Vienna.
Sexism prevented full collaboration. Maria Anna, it is said, had probably more talent than her brother. But because it was in the 1700s in Austria, she could not flourish as a headliner because she was a girl. There was never going to be a Maria-Wolfie collab because it was not possible at the time. Imagine the music…
He died young. He was 35, and we still don’t know what he died from. And because he didn’t have money, he was buried in a pauper’s grave.
If your student is amazing/fantastic/wowzers, then let the student be a star without the comparison. Let Tyrone be “Terrific Tyrone” instead of “another Mozart”.
We teach this.