![]() By the time he gave away writing opera in his late 30s, he was one of the greatest masters of the genre who ever lived a reputation that remains to this day. He could compose full-length operas in a matter of a fortnight or three weeks, and they were inspired. By 18, his brilliant gifts as an operatic composer made him the toast of Italy. Apprenticed to a blacksmith, his musical talent soon put an end to any future career belting iron with a hammer, and at the age of just 12, within the space of just three days, he composed six string sonatas that stunned everyone who heard them. By the age of six he was playing in one of his father's musical groups. ![]() In that environment he grew up speaking music as if it were a natural language. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. Gioacchino Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. By the time he reached adulthood he was not only well on his way to composing the more than 3,000 works for which he’s famous today but was a fine baritone singer capable of doubling up on harpsichord, organ and other keyboard instruments, plus violin, recorder, chalumeau, cello, and various lutes. And even though his parents banned him from any advanced musical studies, he continued to teach himself in secret. He wrote his first opera at 12, by which point he’d already mastered a further three instruments. As a 10-year old he had some singing lessons and just two weeks of keyboard studies, which seems to have been quite enough to set him up for life. In his fact, they were openly hostile to his childhood interest in music. You don’t end up in the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific composer in history unless you started young, but Georg Telemann’s story is even more remarkable because he didn’t come from a musical family. Here are ten composers blessed with prodigious skill long before they ever needed to shave. But musical history contains many examples of creative geniuses who’ve created musical masterpieces in their teens or even before. It’s one of the enduring fascinations in classical music – how young musicians can perform seemingly supernatural feats at an age when most other children are still learning the “three R’s”.
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