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Send me your comments and queries (re this website and Arrival): Contact I'll post them below, and try to respond to them as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
Comments on The Arrival of the Fittest: How The Great Become Great by Bill Dorris
There was a time, not that long ago, when psychologists thought long and hard about ideas before they were published. Fritz Heider spent 20 years thinking about and scribbling notes about how people explain the world around them before pulling these observations together into a book that pretty much defined the issues for the next 30 years of experimental social psychology research in attribution theory. Bill Dorris’ book, The Arrival of The Fittest, comes out of the same tradition as Heider. Dorris is a thinker who has for many years now been puzzling about what makes for extraordinary creativity and culturally recognized greatness, and Arrival is the fruition of this thinking. Bill is himself a very creative teacher and researcher who came through and survived (with his own creative imagination intact) some of the most rigorous training in psychology at UC Berkeley and UCLA. He has won numerous teaching awards and published rigorous research in the top journals in psychology. Here he takes on a massive topic, which to my knowledge had never been adequately addressed in the research literature, and develops a comprehensive and compelling account of how extraordinary talent is developed over the course of many years and eventually becomes recognized as ‘greatness’. The end product of Bill’s puzzling over the greatness question is a very imaginative and engaging book that defies classification in the ordinary schemes we employ in academia. First, Arrival is full of case history material drawn from years of Bill’s scholarly reviews of a mélange of ‘greats’ ranging from Bill Russell to Einstein, with extended consideration of the lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Guthrie, and Marilyn Monroe. Obsessive-compulsives will wonder how Bill assembled this list of greats; all I can say is that these are the cultural icons that captured Bill’s imagination (and the imaginations of millions of people around the world in diverse walks in life). Greatness, in the context employed in this book, is whatever reasonably large cultural groups conspire to construe as greatness. Interwoven with the study of these greats is an interesting, provocative, and highly creative theoretical account of how and why these individuals arrived at their destiny. Bill’s theory here is very creative and integrative, bringing together microscopic analyses of individual life histories with extensive psychological research from many specialist areas, all of which is considered in relation to larger institutional, societal, and cultural factors. Then out of this, Bill abstracts a relatively simple, yet extremely compelling theoretical analysis of how it is that the ‘greats’, whether they be Mozarts or Marilyns, become ‘greats’. Several aspects of this theory are quite startling and I expect will be very upsetting to many readers, whether professional psychologists or simply fans of various ‘greats’, in that they hugely diminish the credit which these individuals receive for their achievements. Not surprisingly, Bill's theory has many ramifications in terms of minimizing the heroic and psychological theories of creativity. However, his theory has the advantage of helping to explain the incredibly complex and chaotic sorting that happens over the course of each generation as millions of talented individuals eventually come to be represented by a tiny handful of icons. The version of The Arrival of the Fittest that I reviewed (2002) is in a draft form that could use the caring work of a skilled editor who could help tighten up the presentation while not killing the creative imagination and vivid examples that are so appealing in this book. The stories of the lives that are presented make for very intriguing tales that illustrate the elements of Dorris’ theory about how individuals, families, institutions, and cultures all interact over the course of many years in creating icons of greatness.
Edward J. O'Brien, Ph.D., Professor and Department Chair Psychology and Counseling Department Marywood University Scranton, PA 18509
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I think you have done a very admirable job. You should be proud... One general observation is that you have covered an immense literature range with remarkable accuracy!... Let me know when your book is published, which it will be.
Robert Albert Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology Pitzer College, Claremont, California
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Bill Dorris is interested in the match-up between talented individuals and the social worlds that want them and in which they flourish, and in what happens to the creative process when individual and environment are in synch. These phenomena are important and little studied. Bill may not have it all right, but Arrival of the Fittest is ingenious, wide in scope, and represents years and years of work. It will repay the attention of open-minded people who are interested in the development of talent under conditions which eventually result in celebrity and/or greatness.
Ravenna Helson Research Psychologist Emerita, University of California , Berkeley
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Reading the chapter on Woody Guthrie in Arrival of the Fittest brought his development alive in many ways that I had never before encountered. Not only is the analysis compelling, comprehensive and jargon-free, it also reveals the essential role that aspects of personality and identity played in the development of Woody's musical achievements. I would recommend Arrival to anyone who is interested in seriously considering the origins of their own heroes, stars, or icons.
Dr. Will Kaufman Reader in English and American Studies University of Central Lancashire ( UK )
To read about Will's acclaimed live musical presentation, 'Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin'': http://www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/humanities/staff/kaufman1.htm
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My partner and I have spent some time reading and talking about Arrival. We each read through it, clicking on different side stories, so we wound up referring to bits that the other missed. A reader could pass through it more than a few times and have it different each time. We notice that the material keeps showing up in conversation, esp. "The right kind of problems" and our slight paraphrase "50+ years of development" (you of course have it as 20+ years of development -- keyed to a younger model of greatness). Yes, the loss of heroes. It has to happen one way or another. I really appreciate your research and your point of view. What kind of response are you getting?
Kate Greenstreet Poet New Jersey , USA
thank you, Kate. raised some thots for me. but first I googled your name and got, among many other links. one to 'Kate Greenstreet: Poems online' ( http://www.kategreenstreet.com/links.html ) that had a ton of your poems and reference to a recent book, Case Sensitive
and another, 'Kate Greenstreet Bio' (http://www.kategreenstreet.com/bio.html) with an interview I really enjoyed: eg,
" How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? I'd say that making up a poem is a way to share a secret without telling it."
I clicked one of your poem links... probably becos the title seemed all too familiar:
Leaving the old neighborhood
In the dream I slept all night and you were a saint, your shirt stained yellow near the heart, spontaneously, blue under the arms.
It turns out to be music, our prayers. We went out to tell our mother in her bulb-lit grotto. Chipping a little, but she still looks great, her arms outstretched and her veil, refuge of sinners, cause of our joy.
Wisdom had built herself a house in the dream, I was twins, I was looking for something.
How can the poet be called unlucky who rides on the back of the colt?
Jeezus. how can a reader be unlucky who finds a poem like that...how bout I just print a few dozen more and skip this Arrival nonsense. ok.. back to the small tatters. a few of em anyhow:
"...We each read through it, clicking on different side stories, so we wound up referring to bits that the other missed. A reader could pass through it more than a few times and have it different each time..."
that never occurred to me. hopefully you didn't come up with a different analysis of 'how the great become great' each time. but I like the idea / experience of getting a different read / take with each mix of links. could we be talking postmodern here.. or hey maybe just poetry.
"... and our slight paraphrase "50+ years of development" (you of course have it as 20+ years of development -- keyed to a younger model of greatness)..."
my phrase "20+ years of development" doesn't refer to becoming 'great', it refers to the 20+ years from birth to getting a foothold in the field of eventual 'greatness'. In particular it refers to 20+ years of getting "the right kind of problems" over and over and over so as to develop those 5 "key characteristics" which will eventually be needed to solve the "key problems" of a generation. a solution which may often come.. in your words after some as "50+ years" (more likely with poets than, eg, rock stars or mathematicians)
Here btw is a relevant Note re 20+ years. (since it's not actually included in the online version of Arrival think of it as, well you know, sort of a secret I never really told you):
Attaining the "highest levels of human performance" in any domain (e.g., in art, music, science, or sport) requires "around ten years of extended, daily amounts of deliberate practice activities" in order to acquire "the complex skills and physiological adaptations" essential to "elite performance”. Throughout this book I'm using the longer time period of '20+ years' to refer to the actual life span, from birth onwards, within which such intensive, domain specific training actually occurs. (quotes from Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996, p273; and Ericsson & Charness, 1994, p725).
Speaking of poets. and the question of "Luck/Chance" - knowing how you two love to jump around the links - what are the odds that Allen Ginsberg would ever have written "Howl" if he hadn't happened to let Herbert Huncke camp out at his flat in NYC back in '49. well Herb and his ever expanding pile of nicked goods, and hence eventually NYC's finest. how else would Ginsberg have gotten himself booked into that essential 8 month residence in existential politics and literature with Kirilov at the NY State Psychiatric Institute. Kirilov as in Carl Solomon... as in:
"HOWL for Carl Solomon
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked..."
no doubt you'd know other such poetic tales of ...what's that word, "Chaotic Matching"
thanks again, Kate. and ditto for Case Sensitive (Sept 15, 2006. new from Amazon..)
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I read the information regarding “Arrival” with great interest. Not only do I find your unique approach and perspective regarding "genius” fascinating, but in a sense liberating as well. After a lifetime of that subtle search for recognition to which we of the Western world are all hostage, it was quite freeing to learn that it is not necessarily a dearth of talent or personal characteristics that allows some of us to sink into ordinariness while others rise to genius and recognition. One thing is certain: that complex set of circumstances and chance certainly makes the world a more interesting and mysterious place to inhabit. Please advise how I can get a copy of your book…..if for no other reason than to learn that one final key characteristic that allowed Norma Jeane to metamorphose into Marilyn!
Lorie Steinhauer, Detroit, Michigan
ah yes.. Norma Jeane's final key characteristic (which I omitted at the end of "key characteristics" page). I had to save something for the book.. but just between you and me here it is:
... And creating Marilyn Monroe required one final key characteristic. In the casting couch world of Hollywood – with 1000s of starlets, pinups, and models all aiming to get their name up on the marquee as the next Betty Grable, Lana Turner, Jean Harlow - in a world where "girls have to go to bed a lot", a world where, as Marilyn later said re her childhood, everyone lied about “everything from soup to Santa Claus", to survive, let alone go from folding chutes on an assembly line to becoming a film legend, required "certain ethical standards". It required knowing at some basic level – that no matter how much you wished it otherwise – life was always gonna be another roll of the dice, another cattle market parading for the highest bidder. "Vulnerable soul" she might be, but to make it to the top, to even get a shot at it, Marilyn'd have to "know which tales evoked a sympathetic reaction from this or that person". She's have to be "savvy enough" to play the "lost stray" for the handouts she needed; to purr up to John Carroll in her "tight sweater and white flared shorts", a "lost waif" who hadn't "eaten since yesterday" and "had no transportation home". Savvy enough to put "all her money into (acting classes), rent, and auto maintenance", to "walk the boulevard for her meals"; savvy enough to "play 'pretend games' to evoke pity and elicit comfort", to "secure a professional's talent" and then "thank" him "with her body". Eight years from folding chutes to Gentlemen; eight years surviving by playing her strong suit in the only game in town, bartering with her self, her body and soul. Eight years of bartering that required "certain ethical standards (that) were not those of most mortals", a bartering where Marilyn with her "injured innocence" was about as "helpless as a sharp knife", a bartering that required Marilyn's fifth key characteristic – her survivor morality.
Five key characteristics, and Marilyn wasn’t exactly born with them. Neither was Norma Jeane... continues in Arrival
Now all that's left to complete that metamorphosis from NJ to Marilyn is to go back to 1926 and read the rest of ch 3 in Arrival ('Norma Jeane Becomes Her Dreams'). it's only bout 20,000 words... well, plus the fiver you owe me for the paragraph above...
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I read "The Main Story" and parts of some links. Congrats on setting forth an intriguing concept in a engaging style with sustained enthusiasm. I can see why at least some reviewers consider your book to be a "tweener:" There's a refreshing scarcity of jargon that might otherwise qualify it for publication by the academic press. And most readers of popular books seek linear page turners, shunning footnotes and their equivalents. Screw 'em. I enjoyed the book's web-posted samplers. Indeed, I have thought about these issues from time to time, devoting probably 0.005% of the time to these matters that you have. My usual conclusion includes ingredients of your thesis: One must be in the right place at the right time to arrive at greatness. And there's lotsa luck involved that's beyond anyone's control. I've often seen/heard performers who I consider "great" but who are not considered so by society (at least not yet). E.g., Leo Kotke comes to mind. And then there's Galileo. His works were indeed great and they're considered great today. But for several hundred years he and his works were blackballed and suppressed by people who (through self-delusion?) thought themselves greater than he. One other thought: Many great people have a well developed ego (statistically more than the population as a whole, in my opinion)... or their egos grow as society lauds their greatness. If this is so, a shy person or one who places a high value on privacy reduces his chances of becoming great, given that talent, birth circumstance, upbringing, challenges, and all other factors are equal. Just one more hurdle that a near great must overcome to achieve greatness. A question: How does one judge an actor to be great instead of merely wildly popular? I'd grant you that MM was very popular, but I have a hard time considering her "great" in the same league, say, as da Vinci and most of the others you cite. And then there's the test of time. Some who are considered "great" today likely will fade from that perch over time as the perspective of history is applied, while others will be declared great after they are gone (e.g., Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly). It comes down this this: Great job.
Dave, Belmont Heights, California
Dave, many txs for all that...
1) re 'tweener' i suspect that i'll prob never get a publisher for the book for simple reason of their sense of markets. but we'll see. maybe get enuff evidence of interest here to eventually convince some publisher to reconsider s definition of markets to include the google generation... but i'm not really too pushed re this as i think the yakroom with author is probably more satisfying re ongoing exchange both ways.
2) re right place right time and greatness you wrote: "...My usual conclusion includes ingredients of your thesis: One must be in the right place at the right time to arrive at greatness. And there's lotsa luck involved that's beyond anyone's control..."
Arrival's argument is right place, right time after time after time after time after time... 20+ years just to get into the field of eventual greatness.. a la Hitch, Woody G, Norma Jeane/MM full stories in book/ excerpts in "SideStories" online.
the right place is of course the right place to have access to the right kind of problems (and resources/human supports) to further develop those 5 key characteristics which will eventually be needed to 'solve problems of generation' and hence become 'great' key point here is how many many many many times you have to be in the right place at the right time and of course how little of this - as you note - is controlled by the person involved
(for more, see "Luck/Chance", "Chaotic Matching", and "and as for Heroes?" in "Sidestories")
3) re Marilyn and greatness you wrote:
"... A question: How does one judge an actor to be great instead of merely wildly popular? I'd grant you that MM was very popular, but I have a hard time considering her "great" in the same league, say, as da Vinci and most of the others you cite..."
My criterion for judging 'greatness' isn't spelled out in the online version of Arrival but the basic idea comes from academic res lit re such and is simply that a person becomes 'great' if their creations force all others who come after them in the field/society to have to reconsider/rethink their approach to the problems at hand.. this is easier perhaps to see in relation to creations which have to do with physical reality (a la Galileo, Newton, Einstein etc) than when it related to social reality/ideology (Jesus, Luther, Elvis, Marilyn..)
in Marilyn's case her solution to 1950s postWar female identity crisis was later extended to include her "assertion of .. naturalness in relation to sexuality" (Dyer, 1986, p32), hence not a million miles to Madonna and the question of postmodern identity/sexuality.. (this is discussed in Arrival but not online)
re Buddy Holly, Leo Kotke.. I leave that to you to sort.. but only comment in relation to my arguments in Arrival that 1) the emergence of 'greatness' can obviously and often does come after one's death, eg, Abe Lincoln (discussed in book, but not online)..and 2) again it's all a matter of getting that perfect fit between person.. cultural crisis ..eg.. how many 100 years was it before Shakespeare was finally established.. (see "Catalytic Acceleration to Greatness" re Elvis for eg here re the alignments needed)
3) re shyness etc and greatness.. I haven't made any study of this. of course 'shy people' do become great.. eg Haydn,Louis Armstrong weren't exactly roaring egos. Darwin was notoriously camera shy.. and in fact would have been scuttled shortly after publication of Origin if it weren't for the likes of Lyell, Hooker and the other 'heavies' in the British scientific establishment who did the gun slinging for him (he of course being the third or was it fourth to publish a correct version of the theory of evolution.. and whatever happened to the rest of them? the most prominent of these btw - Alfred Russel Wallace - was, in line with your thoughts, more than happy to play second fiddle to Darwin.. reflecting no doubt a load of social class/status differences, whatever about 'shyness' on ARW's part.)
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The following is a list of quotes from “Arrival,” that I loved and had to comment on whilst reading…!!
~"What I discovered wasn’t much fun.. Cos it meant giving up my heroes... And that wasn’t easy, but there was no way around it. It was simply that those who become ‘great’ – the Elvis’s and Einstein’s, the Mozart’s, Michaels, and Marilyn’s – the lot of them have virtually nothing to do with attaining that status," - a statement I would agree wholeheartedly and in full with, and unfortunately have experienced this.
~"Marilyn Monroe a ‘great’?? Come on. Actually I think she is, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter." - I agree!
~"...Academic presses say the style isn't right. You can't publish a Brand new, comprehensive, theory of greatness, and have it read like a Blog. Nobody'll take it seriously," - Why the heck not???? Get with the programme, a blog would appeal to a wide variety of audiences and I personally would much rather read this style. You have hit the nail on the head here –“An explanation laced with stories and anecdotes, but also with tons of notes and references, giving me the info I need to chase it up for myself, Google or Otherwise..." - cut the bull, enjoy the reading and chase up your choice of references outside the core text. What's wrong with that?
~ “ As will soon be evident the problems which Norma Jeane had to take on over the course of her childhood and adolescence weren’t of her own choosing, they came with the ‘families’, the ever changing families, she was a part of. And just like piano or tennis lessons, the years she spent taking on, and ‘solving’, the interpersonal problems posed by these organizations and the teams within them, served to continuously develop her perfect self doubt , that key characteristic which ever drove her to find a new self, a new identity -- the one which she eventually found in Hollywood with the creation of Marilyn.” ~ This is a beautiful summary and an excellent way of teaching the concept of self doubt….
~ “ a world which has produced Beethoven and Mozart and continues to produce people capable of playing and appreciating them,” – the 'right side' of the tracks – I enjoy the comparison here between the Arts and Sciences and then the 'wrong side' of the tracks – it is not just those who are born into the 'correct', elitist family that become the great – look at “ the Ali's and Dempsey's and Sugar Ray's” – the families they grew up in-barely enough money to put bread on the table.
BD comment: So they ended up pursuring different fields of 'greatness', ie those available in the worlds they grew up in. course it wasn't so much about money in Ali's case, but because of race (& racism) in the States, that he grewup in a section of Louisville which allowed a 12 year old Cassius Clay - by pure chance - to come into contact Joe Martin and his boxing program in that gym in the basement of Columbia Auditorium in the fall of 1954. here again btw another one of those essential chance events that occur over and over in the lives of those who eventually become 'great' (see, "Luck/Chance" in "SideStories")
~ I really enjoyed reading the notes on Norma Jeane and her Aunt Grace.
~” The years I spent on Arrival , those 15 years in the back of Burger King,” –are you serious, Bill???!!
well, Fiona, since you asked... for starters how bout Burger King, Kay's Kitchen, Graham OSullivans (Northside & Artane Castle), Pearse Dart Station, Davenport Hotel, National Gallery, Take 5, Kilkenny Design, Trinity (Buttery & Arts Block), Hodges Figgis, Waterstones, Bewleys (Westmoreland), The Winding Stair, Arnotts (Grafton & Henry St), Boyers... and course Dublin Airport.. only coffee shop open on Northside on Sundays. (one of guys working there asked me once what I was doing.. I told him and he laughed. they all thought I was stealing luggage but couldn't figure how... he then told me how to park for free at Dublin Airport)... and of course did most of Einstein in back of DCU main canteen in my 'office' under the plate glass windows
~ “ the crap that kids’ spirits, not to mention parents’ wallets, and all our lives, get yoked with for years.” – and ain’t that true!!
“Arrival” gives a lot of food for thought. It’s clear, concise account of how these popular culture icons of past and present reach their destination of. ..Greatness. Whilst, the ordinary Joe Soap, like myself as a child slogs along with piano lessons, my parents forking out a weekly small fortune to advance my “natural??!” talents, there are little Mozarts beavering away and facing the right kind of problems –“The kind Wolfgang got for 3 years in Salzburg, 3 years of day, after day, after day . . . of minuets and allegros and Wagenseil and Bach and Telemann….,”I would like to sit down with a cup of coffee and read this book in full..
Fiona, Dublin, Ireland
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I am fascinated by the snippets of your book on genius, “Arrival,” described on your website http://homepage.eircom.net/~wdorris/greatnesshome.html. I too have been fascinated by the concept of genius, and have informally studied the process by which genius is generated, particularly in the world of my expertise, which is mathematics, but also in the world of classical music. Composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, mathematicians like Sir Isaac Newton, appear with magical abilities seemingly out of the blue. I have always wondered on what process is at play here. I see that you have a different and novel hypothesis, backed up by plenty of thought and research. My problem is, I want more. You gave me enough material to get me thinking, but I would like to read the details. Surely this must be of interest to many. I hope you can find a publisher. For example, Johann Sebastian’s brother Johann Christoph took lessons from the noted composer Pachelbel, and gave Johann Sebastian lessons himself. Two brothers, similar genes, yet one is arguably the greatest musical genius in history, while the other while likely a skilled musician hardly reached the same heights. So, please put me on your distribution list. I’d love to have a copy of your book, when and if it becomes available. Good luck, you’ve got a very interesting idea.
Peter Morris Los Altos Hills, California
Peter, thank you for that. I haven't studied Bach or his older brother. but I can feel it coming on… so try not to nod off.
"magical abilities seemingly out of the blue"
now that one's not too tough given that none of us, except eg parents and close friends etc ever even know about the next out of the bluer for first 20+ years of s life.. so we see none of the preparation, development, trainers, pit crew, roadies, stage managers... bit like a magic show come to think bout it.. we never see the background preps, just the final magical illusion sparkling there on stage..
what you'd expect decent biographers to do is provide this background information and with it an analysis re how these magical abilities appear not out of the blue, but out of years of what i call getting the right kind of problems (plus resources and supports to take them on) over and over and over and over again.
but in my experience they never do.
My general point re all of such is simply that if you study in detail the actual development of any of these geniuses who somehow 'magically appear out of the blue', what you find is always in direct contradiction to the sort of mythology that is promoted in their biographies, and worse yet in short synopses/promos of their lives.
This mythical version is more or less that such geniuses, greats, are virtually self taught, that they would have sorted it for themselves and somehow, via struggle & determination - barring disaster - would have risen to the top.
Let's have a quick look at Johann Sebastian and his brother Johann Christoph (of whom you undoubtedly know a fair wack more than I - so any corrections welcome).
if you look at Schonberg's The Lives of the Great Composers re Bach (or for that matter anyone else), the clear message is that JS is the driving force behind all that amazing creative output, he is the cause of it, the one who initiates, seeks out, makes the music his own, and in process extends it to unimaginable levels. while the social context of his development is mentioned, the sources of musical influence etc, it is always implicitly clear that JS is the man, he is the player, he's the cause of it all.
a few egs:
p22-23 (i've got the Abacus 1992 paperback version)
"With Bach the baroque in music came to fulfillment. Bach was all that had gone before, and he anticipated much that was to come..."
"Bach seems to have had insatiable professional curiosity... He went to hear new music, whenever it was possible for him to attend, and was constantly reading what he was not able to hear in person.." As a youth he would absent himself from his duties to listen to the great organists - Vincent Lübeck and Buxtehude, among others... He knew the old music by Palestrina, etc... new music by Vivaldi, etc.. he was familiar with the music of the French school, from Lully to etc.. of the German composers he esteemed the music of Froberger etc etc, etc..."
and the concluding, summary sentence re the apparently obvious cause of all this??
"As a child he grew up with an unquenchable musical appetite, and was never able to satisfy it"
and then continuing the implied, in fact often explicit, causal analysis of how it was that Bach became Bach the next paragraph continues:
"To a large extent he was probably self-taught. Musicians on the order of genius possessed by a Bach, a Mozart, or a Schubert do not need much instruction. They have minds like blotters that immediately soak up and assimilate every musical impulse. They merely have to be pointed in the right direction and be given a little push. So it was with Bach. From the very beginning he took from all sources and made them his own..."
and what exactly do we know of the actual experience of Bach growing up.. upon which such claims are presumably based? what do we know of Bach's actual childhood? the conditions of his actual exposure to music, what actually happened day to day in his development that gave rise to the adult version which was "...perhaps the most stupendously gifted figure in the history of music" (p16)
turns out we know almost nothing. at least nothing of use in making the sort of developmental analysis that would explain how Bach actually became Bach.
we have some clear indications of why it was likely that as a Bach, JS would have a damm good shot at ending up in a musical career - in fact the odds on him making it as a Bach would have been one helluva lot better than probably virtually all of the 2-5% of his peers who genetically could have become outstanding musicians, at least outstanding enough to keep JS out of one of the relatively few fulltime paid musical positions - like, eg, the one JS had as cantor at St Thomas Church in Leipzig for 27 years - the sort of positions which are of course essential for creating a musical legacy.
In terms of accessing such positions in Baroque Germany, we do know that Bach was incredibly well sorted when it came to getting the toe in:
"There were musical Bachs in Arnstadt and Eisenach, in Ohrdruf, Hamburg, and Lüneburg, in Berlin, Schweinfurt, and Halle, in Dresden, Gotha, Weimar, Jena, Mühlhausen, Minden, and Leipzig. They were a close-knit, clannish group who loved to visit one another, making music, exchanging gossip. trying to place members of their own family in important musical posts. Whenever an opening presented itself anywhere in Germany , news raced through the ganglia of the great Bach family, casuing twitches and responses. As often as not, the Bachs got their man in" (p15)
so in this regard, JS already has a massive advantage over virtually all of his birth equals, ie that 2-5% of potentially great musicians of his generation who from the outset lacked the Bach family network, what Robert Albert would refer to as an "eminence producing family". but JS had nothing to do with creating this advantage... well other than being born. suppose he had been born to some millwright or farmhand the next hamlet over.. or for that matter into some family of barons and archdukes which happened to be big into the polo or fox hunting circuit. what then re the odds we'd ever heard of JS? well according to Bloom's massive study of top USA talent in likes of concert pianists, Olympic swimmers, sculptors, professional tennis stars, etc - defo not the kind of odds you'd be betting on. ( Developing Talent in Young People by B.S. Bloom et al 1985)
What we don't know is how JS got to be the sort of musician who could maximize the creative potential of holding such a position - eg his 27 years as cantor of St. Thomas 's Church in Leipzig .
first off forget that "unquenchable appetite" line. think back to whatever it was that grabbed you like candy when you were a kid.. we all had something. we'd be more than happy to "absent (ourselves) from (our) duties to listen to (chase/hustle etc)" that's a given.. the issue is getting the opp to "listen to" those "great organists(magicians/comics/ hockey/baseball/tennis players...)", or - and what's the odds on this - get one to one mentoring from them... over and over and over and over through those first 20+ years of development, like say from JS' father, Johann Ambrosius, "a highly regarded church organist in Eisenach" (p15), or his older brother, Johann Christoph, the "organist at Ohrdruf", who as you informed me, "took lessons from the noted composer Pachelbel".
eg, you mentioned music as one of your core interests.. how well did your first 20+ years play out in terms of getting such opps?? not exactly the Bach family legacy I'm guessing.
Now If Schonberg's correct, we do know a few bits re Bach's childhood and early life that would have clearly affected both his access to learning experiences and how he might have responded to them... but we know virtually nothing of what actually happened.
Schonberg, for eg, identifies several obvious starting points for figuring how JS developed the key characteristics - to use my terms - he would need as a adult to produce the likes of 'The Well-Tempered Clavier', 'The Art of Fugue', or the 'Brandenburg' concertos.
and if you check the stuff re "Key Characteristics" in 'SideStories", you'll notice right off that great creative productions - the likes of Bach's or Einstein's or Picasso's etc - require much much more than the obvious intellectual skills related to the field involved. eg sensitivity to sound, pitch, rhythm etc re classical music.
they also require personality and self characteristics which fit with the eventual conditions of problem solving, eg with the challenges of creating music in the context of Bach's 27 year post as cantor at St Thomas's.
All of these key characteristics are inevitably developed together, in the context of the child/adolescent's ongoing experiences.
In Bach's case - as with every other great - there's always a fair wack of psych research relevant to starting to make sense of how various influences would have come into play to facilitate/inhibit his development in various directions.
here's a few which Schonberg mentions that would obviously be important - influences which would have been unique to JS and hence essential to understand re crediting the causes of his eventual musical legacy. the only hitch of course is that we know virtually nothing re how any of these actually played out and hence in what ways each (or a multitude of others of which we know nothing) was crucial to creating the music which Bach eventually produced. (pp15-16):
* he was "the youngest of eight children" there's plenty of research re effects of birth order/sibling position on psych development, eg Solloway's Born to Rebel (1998) - whose title refers to the youngest child in family. might this, for eg, be related to the "harmonic intensity (that above all else) sets Bach's music apart from that of his contemporaries", to the creation of the sort of compositions in which "a completely new harmonic language is forged", a forging "his listeners were not used to", for which he was constantly being "rebuked".. in response to which - think 'born to rebel' - "his harmonic adventurousness became more and more pronounced" (pp24-5 in schonberg) If so Schonberg says nothing about it. He merely noted that "a superior harmonic sense is the mark of nearly all the great composers.." (p25), ie, the same old implicit 'genius born to change the world' nonsense.
ditto if the biographical information were available, similar arguments could be developed for several other factors which Schonberg mentions:
* his father was a "highly regarded church organist" what was his relationship to his father/older brother re music or any other aspect of development.. eg contrast of young Mozart vs Beethoven in relation to the old man.. effects on their musical styles and ditto personalities, which of course underlie the sizable differences in their adult musical creations.
* JS mother died when he was nine, father when he was 10 lot of research re effects of parental loss at early age on psych development. eg Simonton's list of great composers who lost one or both parents during first or second decade includes the likes of Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Liszt, Puccini, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, von Weber, and Wagner. (D. K. Simonton, Greatness, 1994, p154). There are various explanations given re the likely effects of such loss on the child, in particular on the child who eventually becomes a major player in s field. common to all of these explanations is the argument that the child, feeling alone in life, turns inward to discover who e is, to find s direction. such turning in the case of a child with outstanding musical potential could obviously turn into quite a career bonus if Simonton's list is anything to go by.
* JS and brother taken in by older brother, JC (the one you mention) - another organist - for five years. what was the nature of this relationship or more to the point of JS' position in the family. You were puzzling re relative musical achievements of JB vs JC. well one thing's obvious enough - whatever about their relative genetic potential or even musical development at the time JS went to live with his older brother, JC with his own family and now two younger brothers to look after wasn't gonna be selected as the "one child in a family (who) is treated as special", that one special child targeted by the adults to get "excellent instruction", plenty of time "to practice", and loads of the "family's resources to (facilitate this special child's) learning in the talent field" (that general conclusion re talent development comes from pp538-9 in Bloom's book re the childhood/teen years of top pianists, swimmers, sculptors, etc above)
The relevant psych research re even these few factors suggests some likely possibilities for how these influences would have come into play to produce for eg a Bach rather than a potentially great musician/composer who no one ever heard of... or for that matter a Mozart or a Beethoven, who - for reasons of personality and self for starters - would never have thrived under the production schedule/ resources/ admin duties that Bach faced as cantor at St T's.
imagine, for eg, Beethoven at St T's for 27 years. Beethoven who "looked upon himself as an artist... an artist (and) a creator, and as such superior to kings and nobles". Imagine Beethoven vowing to "show to the Honorable and Most Wise Council all proper respect and obedience" as part of his job application. Beethoven, dutifully cranking out cantatas for Sunday mass, week after week for 27 years. (pp 83 & 17, Schonberg),
Clearly it was not Bach, the born genius with that "unquenchable appetite" for music, who got himself those 27 years at St. T's.
it was the Bach that his years and years of accessing - almost always through no fault of his own - precisely the right kind of problems to develop the key chars - musical, personality and otherwise - that he eventually needed to turn those 27 years at St T's into a caldron of musical creativity. well that plus the fact that, as Councilor Platz noted, "since the best man (Georg Philipp Telemann) could not be obtained, mediocre ones would have to be accepted". (p18-9 schonberg)
So do I admire the music? you bet.
And the man? you bet... just like Seabiscuit.
and as for the rest of that 2-5% who might have beaten War Admiral at Pimlico??
hey, we can't all end up in Hollywood.
oops.. sorry bout that. but you know yourself... see a man holding a camera.
never, never ask bout the family.
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