This might be a good question for this well-informed list (see post
subject).  Is there something about the wiring of the brain that
facilitates becoming a great composer or is it their exposure to
music and opportunity to explore it - nature or nurture?.

If nurture, nearly anyone could be taken in hand at an early age, say 3,
and given the knowledge to write great music.

If nature, only a genetically endowed brain has a chance of becoming
anything beyond mediocre composers.

Some criteria:

- Perfect pitch, whether learned or inherited doesn't seem to matter (see
   previous thread).
- Mozart wrote with ease, while others struggled. (It might be that some
   genres are easier to write than   others)
- Some composers came from musical families, others did not
- Some people have a sense of rhythm, some don't (can this be learned?)
- Some composers started late in life
- Some composers were also good at drawing
- Some composers were obliged to follow more rules of music than others by
   attitudes of the time.
- Some composers were very clumbsy at other things
- Most composers tend to be a bit rebellious
- Some had easy lives, some had hard lives.

Now, if nature, what natural skills are needed (that can't be learned) -
natural sense of rhythm, natural sense of form and architecture, etc.? What
percentage of the population has these traits?

Now, if nurture, what must be learned learned, experienced or suffered
through to become a great composer?

Is it both?.  Great composers were fortunate to have the right brain and
the right nuturing.  If this is true the 2 questions above still are
appropriate.  What are these things?

We surely know enough about past and present composers to get a sense
of this.  Apart from a love of music, is there annything they all had in
common? What have great composers said on this subject? Is musical talent
just a reflection of one's knowledge about music theory and internals?

I would exempt one aspect of music from this and that is so called
"muscular intelligence" and natural co-ordination, which may or may not
be learnable (I think it can be).  But that more rightly applies to the
question "Are great performers born or made".  We might do that one later.

I will start the discussion with this bold statement "A healthy virgin
brain can be shaped to be anything including another Beethoven, Mozart, or
Chopin.  Its the knowledge - stupid" (not offensively meant).  Am I wrong?

Bill Pirkle