Portugal

It Takes 2 to Make a Genius

Ana Paz

Can genius be taught?

Opinions have been divided for several centuries. Some consider that exceptional musicians were born with talent and, during their lifetime, genius only reveals what they already had. Others, while not denying that there are people born with very special talents, consider that this natural disposition needs to be fostered by an adequate education and cultural environment, or genius will never show.

During the 19th century, in a small European kingdom called Portugal, some prodigal boys began to appear. One of them was our little friend in the photo, called José Viana da Mota. He was born in 1868, on the beautiful tropical island of São Tomé – at the time it was part of the kingdom, today is an independent country, called the Republic of Sao Tome and Principe. His father was a doctor and loved music. Unfortunately, the whole family had to return to Portugal about one year later due to a tropical disease which Dr. Viana da Mota caught. The baby along with his brothers and sisters settled in the very healthy village of Colares (near Sintra – Lisbon) in Portugal. The young child soon started to reveal musical talent, and his father, once healed, made sure he had everything he needed to enhance this natural gift. He invested all his money, knowledge, social ties and resources on this son’s education.

Why does it take 2 to make a genius?

First of all, it takes a human being and his instrument (it can be his/ her own voice). In the photo, we see Viana da Mota, about five years old, and his harmonium, which his father built especially for him. In this case, it also takes 2 hands to play it. In time, this child became a very good piano player and his father was willing to pay for a private teacher. This figure, the music teacher, was most used by families who wanted their children to learn music. Most people preferred it to music schools, especially girls, because they stayed at home! To become a piano player, José Viana da Mota also made very good use of both his feet, to manage the pedals. Most of all, both of his eyes were required, when the small piano player started to learn how to read the music sheets. As well as this, both of his ears were very special, as they were trained to become sensitive to the sounds he could make in the piano! Watching the way the promising young boy was developing, it was probably José Azevedo Madeira, his private teacher, who “revealed” young Viana da Mota as a genius and asked his father to show the child prodigy to the Countess of Edla and her husband, King Fernando I. The teacher was aware that these people were particularly fond of music and quite willing to assume his patronage – and so the 2 of them compromised to pay for all Viana da Mota’s education expenses and honoured him with royal protection until the end of his life. Many people don’t realise that the monarchy ended in Portugal in 1910; however, the piano player only died in 1948. Despite this, the Saxe-Coburg Gotha dynasty honoured their promise, both in Portugal and abroad!

Nowadays, students may attend local schools of classical music, but in those days, they would have had to go to the county’s capital, Lisbon, where the only official school was located. So, the Viana da Mota family packed up and moved there, choosing to live just a few blocks away from the music school. José was 13 years old when he finished at the classical music school and was ready… to become a genius.

He didn’t have to attend school anymore; he had finished his piano course and high school was not mandatory in Portugal. However, the royal family – with roots in Germany – provided for young Viana da Mota to be sent to Germany, where he was able to choose the teachers and schools, he needed in order to develop his piano-playing education. This would be impossible nowadays as a genius would be overwhelmed by the bureaucracy it takes to be a grant holder. At the end of the 19th century, and having the status of a nation’s child prodigy, he simply went alone to Berlin and chose to learn about the elements that he was most interested in. But it always takes 2 to become a genius, so he took the advice of older people, such as his father – to whom he wrote frequently -, the royal family, and the new musical friends that he had met in Germany. But things were not so easy for the talented and gifted. Besides having spent years apart from his family, he was a musical genius, but never finished high school. He had to learn everything in private, at his own expense, and during his lifetime. He was recognised as a very cultivated man, but he studied most subjects as his own teacher.

Also, Viana da Mota was married twice to German women, and once to a Portuguese lady – they were all singers and played in his concerts. He had 2 beautiful daughters; they both played the piano.

He was a resident in 2 countries, Germany and Switzerland, before returning to Portugal, by the time of the First World War. He became the Head of the Lisbon’s Conservatoire (the one he attended as a child) and made very deep reforms. Since adolescence, he always spoke & wrote 2 languages, Portuguese and German.

Some say that he was more than a man, he was also a genius.

What has school got to do with genius?

As we move gradually from the 18th century to the 19th and 20th centuries, we soon find that family education is being replaced more and more by learning in formal classical music colleges and private teaching. During the 19th century, many countries organised their schooling systems in different ways. Music schools were introduced in a variety of forms, but globally, by the beginning of the 20th century, there were more material conditions to produce ‘genius’ than ever before. Only, despite this modernisation, formal music learning was still dominated by models such as Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach. This meant that students were encouraged to imitate models who learned music in a different manner, and in fact never attended that sort of music school. The question follows, then, of whether genius can be taught at all? No one can really tell, as it may take so long for you to be recognised as a genius, that virtually anybody can become one. But it takes 2 to realise this, and soon enough it became widely recognised that the path of school was essential in order to recognise who could become a genius. This was the story of José Viana da Mota, a child prodigy who had to learn how to become a genius.

Word: Genius

Number: 2