Your question cannot be answered empirically, because we cannot put a
random orphan child and train it to be another Beethoven (or, in a much
more sinister world, to be a second Caligula).

So my answer is a try.  I think that the talent for music is a must for
a future composer, that is: a future GREAT composer (my mediocre musical
talent would comfortably allow me to compose but I dont know who would like
to listen to my stuff).  So talent is a must but also the right nurturing
of this talent.

A friend of mine is a midwife and she says over the years she has made
the everreturning experience that the newborn babies are already characters.
I do not think that this says that everything is genetically designed in us
but it says that a lot of decisions are already settled and that it is up
to us (and of course our parents or the people in charge) to bring out our
best.

I am a vivid salsa dancer and I have a lot of opportunity to see people
dance: some of them dance like angels from the very first day on, some
have to work their way through the steps and the rhythm and only reach a
mediocre capability of dancing (but sometimes nevertheless a helluva fun).
Not everyone can become Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers even if he/she works
as hard as he/she can.

Robert Peters
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