I reasoned that if age were the critical factor, those who started their careers
early would have to wait longer to produce good work than those composers
who started late. In fact, this was not the case. The median number of years to
first notable composition was 16.5 for the first group, 22 for the second group,
and 21.5 forthe third group.
It appears then that what composers need to write good music is not matur-
ing but rather musical preparation. The results make it dramatically clear that
no one composes outstanding music without first having about 10 years of in-
tensive musicalpreparation.
These resultsdo notmean that there is no such thing as genius. Theydo not
mean that just anyone with 10 to 25 years of experience can write great music.
Theydomean that even a person endowed with the genius of Mozart or Beet-
hoven will still need 10 years or more of intense preparation to realize his or
herpotential.
Do painters also require years of intense preparation to be productive? San-
dra Bond, Carol Janik, Felicia Pratto, and I have conducted a parallel study of
painters designed to answer this question. For the purpose of the study, we
defined an outstanding painting as one reproduced in any of 11 standard his-
tories of art. We defined the beginning of the artist’s career as the point at
which he orshe began intensive studyof art. Formany,this pointwas marked
by the beginning ofanapprenticeship orby entry into an artacademy.
Figure 23.6 shows how productivity (the number of outstanding works pro-
duced per year per painter) varies with the painters’ years of experience in the
profession.The16-yearcurvepresentsdatafor132painterswhohadcareersof
at least 16 years. The 40-year curve presents data for 102 painters who had
careers ofatleast40years.
The results for painters are generally similar to those for composers. The
productivity curve for painters has an initial period of very low productivity
followedbyaperiodinwhichproductivityincreasesveryrapidly.Thenthereis
a long period of stable productivity followed by a gradual decline. The period
of rapid increase in productivity occurs between 6 and 12 years for painters
rather than between years 10 and 24 as was observed for composers. This dif-
ference may reflect differences in the nature of the skills involved in the fields
ordifferencesinourcriteriaforidentifyingoutstandingworksinthetwofields.
In part, we believe it reflects a difference in the sensitivity of our biographical
measures to experience in music and art. We believe that parents are more
likely to notice and record musical activity, perhaps because it makes a noise,
than drawing. For many of the painters, there was evidence of early but
undated drawing activity. Because it was unquantifiable, this early experience
could not beincluded inourstudy aspartofthe painter’s preparation.
Ifskillinchess,musicalcomposition,andpaintingdepend onlarge amounts
of knowledge, it is easy to believe that there are other skills that do so as well,
for example, skills in writing poetry, fiction, or expository prose, and skill in
science, history, and athletics as well as many others. Strategies may help in
acquiring or executing such skills. However, it is unlikely that the use of strat-
egies can circumvent the need to spend large amounts of time acquiring a
knowledge baseforsuchskills.
ThreeProblemsinTeachingGeneralSkills 557