It’s not child’s play
Aldous Huxley observed that ‘Where music is concerned, infant prodigies are almost the rule. In the world of literature, on the other hand, they remain the rarest exceptions.’ This, he believed, was because good literature could not be written without experience of the outside world, while music was the art least connected with reality. ‘Like mathematics,’ he said, ‘it is an almost unadulterated product of the inner world.’ Musicians may dispute the last point, but the fact remains that musical and artistic ability can emerge with dizzying speed. When it does, the question is how best — and how far — to nurture it? Several schools offer a specialised education in
