Elite Performance

Abilities vary widely in all domains of human activity. In music, the vast majority of people are either untrained or can be considered novice musicians, learners, or amateurs at a range of levels from basic to advanced. A small minority are expert, professional musicians, including performers, composers, and listeners such as critics and recording engineers. Elite performers, who are likely to have international careers and to be widely known outside as well as inside the music profession, represent a tiny proportion of this small minority of experts.

The exceptional achievements of elite performers have been the topic of much speculation and, over the past 25 years, a great deal of research. The genealogical records of eminent British families were studied by Sir Francis Galton, who concluded in his book Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into its Laws and Consequences (1870) that eminence is the product of “natural ability.” This belief underlies the “talent account” that many people still find persuasive, despite research undertaken by psychologist Karl Anders Ericsson and his colleagues since 1991 suggesting that superior expertise, demonstrated by elite performance, is acquired as the result of many years of deliberate practice.