I haven’t found an exactly appropriate segue in the post or comments (which are too specific about domains and don’t mention this one), but this post nevertheless seems like an appropriate context to mention that composers appear to be a fairly strong counterexample to the conventional wisdom about creativity declining with age: they not only tend to be most productive, but also usually do their best (and even sometimes most innovative and radical) work, in late age, whether “late age” means 30, 50, or 90.
That phenomenon so dreaded in mathematics, namely doing some brilliant piece of work in one’s twenties and never doing anything significant again despite trying, just doesn’t seem to exist in music.
Currently I know not the causes nor the implications of this difference.
That’s a bit of a surprise, considering the oft-cited links between mathematics and music and the well-publicized math prodigies out there. One possible explanation might be that an apparent prodigy in math is something different from a prodigy in music; that fluid intelligence lets you pick up the technical skills to be writing symphonies as a teenager, but that writing engaging and expressive music requires an additional, different skillset that’s more reliant on crystallized intelligence.
I’m not a classical music buff, but I’ve heard that Mozart’s childhood work, for example, wasn’t very good. Certainly not in comparison with his later stuff.
I haven’t found an exactly appropriate segue in the post or comments (which are too specific about domains and don’t mention this one), but this post nevertheless seems like an appropriate context to mention that composers appear to be a fairly strong counterexample to the conventional wisdom about creativity declining with age: they not only tend to be most productive, but also usually do their best (and even sometimes most innovative and radical) work, in late age, whether “late age” means 30, 50, or 90.
That phenomenon so dreaded in mathematics, namely doing some brilliant piece of work in one’s twenties and never doing anything significant again despite trying, just doesn’t seem to exist in music.
Currently I know not the causes nor the implications of this difference.
That’s a bit of a surprise, considering the oft-cited links between mathematics and music and the well-publicized math prodigies out there. One possible explanation might be that an apparent prodigy in math is something different from a prodigy in music; that fluid intelligence lets you pick up the technical skills to be writing symphonies as a teenager, but that writing engaging and expressive music requires an additional, different skillset that’s more reliant on crystallized intelligence.
I’m not a classical music buff, but I’ve heard that Mozart’s childhood work, for example, wasn’t very good. Certainly not in comparison with his later stuff.