Gardner,

Thought you might find this 15 yr old young man’s music and mind amazing.

Mary-Kathryn at Surviving Winter emailed me the link to this story: “Driven to Music–A Prodigy at Age 15.” She was right about my response. Jay Greenberg is obviously an extraordinarily gifted young man.

There’s much to comment on here, but right now I have time for only a few passing observations.

The article says that Greenberg composes on computer. It gives no details, but I infer from what’s here that Greenberg not only writes the music on computer but plays the music back on the computer as well, just as I can write and read at the same time as I type these words on the screen. I’d be surprised if he didn’t, actually. Computers have made it possible for orchestral composers to realize their work, at least in a kind of rough sonic draft, with much greater ease than back in the day when all that they had was either a piano reduction or a hired orchestra, the latter at great expense and not at all conducive to any kind of editing or 50-bars-at-a-time spurts of inspiration of the kind Greenberg is prone to.

Later we learn that Greenberg can also write music on staff paper, so he’s obviously got his bases covered as far as technology is concerned.

I’m also struck by this bit:

Whose music does he like to hear? “In chronological order, Bach; Mozart; Beethoven; a little bit of Brahms, some of his later pieces, maybe; Prokofiev; Stravinsky; Bartok; some Copland; Ives. You can look at my iPod, there’s a lot of stuff in there.”

Yes: an iPod is a profile. That’s part of why it feels so intimate. Hey, mister, that’s me on that there iPod.

And amid all the other riches of this story, including a haunting photograph and a wonderful, uncanny self-awareness in which I detect depths it would be presumptuous to explore, I’ll close with a final highlight: the image of this young man shaking hands with the prodigy who played his violin concerto at Carnegie Hall: Joshua Bell, whose experiments in subway sublimity so captivated me and my Introduction to Literary Studies class last spring.

Listening to “Seven Stones” from Nursery Cryme as I write. Nearly undone. Don’t tell me beauty is only power in disguise.

May you be granted stamina, Jay.