Teen opera composer Alma Deutscher

I remember seeing a segment about her I think on 60 minutes when she was still quite young. She was so manic it was off-putting. Harsh thing to say about a child I know, but she was really over the top. Nonetheless, I didn’t doubt she had the potential to make great music. It’s too bad I just don’t know enough about symphony music to judge for myself.

She's promising but needs my mentorship to reach the next level.

R1 today BBC Radio 3 did a half an hour feature on her latest opera, and she was incredibly brusque and overbearing when speaking with the older interviewer. She cut him off a good few times, contradicted him and herself, and tried to suggest that atonal music is all universal rubbish with no artistic merit.

I do understand why a teen girl might behave so stridently, though, as her field is replete with domineering older people (especially men) who think they too are the ultimate authority on music, and making herself heard over them must be a challenge. Her accomplishments are so impressive, she has a right to some arrogance.

R1 was it this episode?

Her technical improv skills are stunning for her age.

while we're bringing back child labor... can we return a few to shoes. The quality really went downhill after they stopped.

Perhaps she saw Amadeus one too many times.

That misogynist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been reincarnated.

An embarrassing phenomenon. She’s extraordinarily gifted, but in a world of billions she’s still one among thousands, if not tens of thousands. She has a wide range of abilities but she’s not in the first rank as composer, violinist, or pianist. She has just been very aggressively marketed.

No one would listen to any of her pieces if they were labelled as the work of a 40-year-old. The circus act aspect is the totality of the appeal—people are suckers for supposed prodigies. In reality, precocity doesn’t have all that much to do with being a great musician., and even less to do with being a great composer. She might grow up to write competent film scores.

PR people publicise her as a prodigy but ignore the music.

Opera is impossible.

This person is sub-Rachmaninov.

On par with Richard Addinsell or Cyril Scott.

Their name reminds me of—

R10. Comparing her to those people is to exalt her considerably over what she is.

R9 what do you mean by the last comment? That it's impossible to write new relevant opera, as it's a dying genre? Or that patrons/aficionados/creators of opera will champion anything new and different regardless of quality out of pretension?

[quote] That it's impossible to write new relevant opera, as it's a dying genre?

How many operas written in the last six decades have justified return seasons?

I can think of only one.

R13. And what would that one be?

Thank you for asking, R14, but I'll stay coy for a while so as not to push this new, fragile thread off into a tangent.

This is supposedly a piano concerto.

The orchestra is pretty much irngnored.

Worse than her mediocrity (when compared to truly gifted musicians) is her anti-modernist aesthetic ( and by modern she seems to mean anything written after 1880). Music has moved on because the older style have already been heavily worked over by the greatest musicians the world has produced. I’m not saying it’s inconceivable a living composer could produce something original and moving in the musical language of Beethoven or Brahms, but the odds are heavily against it. And based on her sun-Friedrich Seitz violin concerto I don’t think she’s the person to attempt it.

R16 sensitivity and responsiveness to others often comes with age. Almost all teens are self-absorbed.

R16. Yes. It’s only her parents who are to blame in this sorry spectacle.. She’s just doing what kids and teenagers do. It’s her parents fault it’s all being pushed on the public.

[quote] It’s only her parents who are to blame in this sorry spectacle.

Let's hope this person doesn't end up like—

Get a load of r17–

Hey, Alma…

She's on the same level currently as a B-list 18th-century composer, or the earliest Beethoven juvenalia. Which, don't get me wrong, is impressive. If she's not writing anything groundbreaking, or much outside the well-trod repertoire of other derivative wunderkind composers of the last 200 years, she does have talent. But she should probably stick to med school, like every other musically-gifted teenager without Svengali parents does.

Juvenilia.

R22- It's a bit harsh to be calling her a whore at her age, isn't it?

R24 Was about to Oh, Dear myself. Sigh. She may not be a world-historical composer, but I never made it to the county spelling bee. Alas.

It's not enough to just win in the talent category.

A young lady must have manners and comportment and be able to speak in front of a crowd. Otherwise, she's just a pint-sized harlot with an attitude.

Dear R26, I'm just reassuring myself that I pronounced this odd word correctly.

I used the word last month when my state gallery enquired about some of my early work and they looked at me as though they'd never heard the word before.

Unimpressed!

[quote] Teen opera composer

A piano sonata is different from a piano duet which is different from a piano quintet.

A piano quintet with backing singers is different from an oratorio which is different from a one-act opera let alone a full-evening's opera of music, singing, sets, and drama.

R17 Are you saying this teenager is as basic as this? —

R4 that was an after-show extra. They did a full segment on her.

R3. Geez I hadn’t listened to that BBC programme She is snooty and condescending yet it’s clear she’s speaking from ignorance and bias. She calls Irving Berlin and Cole Porter “Hollywood composers” and criticises all of modern music on the basis of the Darmstadt school. She also makes the modernist composer character in her opera a sexual harasser Again, she’s a teenager so you can’t blame her so much. Her parents should be protecting her more from this kind of suturions.

As an aside, Is this really the kind of music that receives public funding in Austria these days? She’s the Jackie Evancko of musical composition.

R31. Judge for yourself.

Haben Sie Gehort Das Deutscher Band?

She speaks

‘How can music be so beautiful?’

[quote] She … criticises all of modern music on the basis of the Darmstadt school.

Wiki tells us that the "Darmstadters" refers to Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen and others who gathered at Darmstadt in Germany from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in order to produce noise via a method called "dodecaphony.

Good for her. At least she's producing something new and creative and putting it out into the world.

She's probably on the spectrum. Besides being a snooty little shit like most teenagers are, she'll need some serious help to be able to develop the social skills needed to be a functional adult.

R40 yes, I intuited some of kind salient autism (I am female, and have Asperger’s).

On the one hand, she’s been lucky to have her abilities & gifts acknowledged and so supported, but as you say, if she isn’t receiving social & emotional support, the exposure could be devastating in the long run.

[quote] She might grow up to write competent film scores.

Hey, we made a good career out of it.

I agree R39. She's very impressive in her great talent. She's a genius.

R22/R25 ‘Alma’ is a pretty name for a female. It means ‘soul’ in Spanish.

It’s a shame it isn’t more popular, and that ‘Brokeback Mountain’ gave it a frumpy connotation.

It's a name you don't hear of too much anymore. It is a pretty name. I knew a few named Alma, that were my parents' age....years ago.

Alma! Check your battery!

She's got NERD! written all over her.

R41. The difficulty is that her abilities are not enough to sustain her as an adult. The music is not interesting in itself. It’s being noticed because people find it interesting that the music is written by a child. She might have the talent to be a conductor, piano accompanist, or film composer if she were handled properly. We can hope that she can survive the decline in interest as she matures.

Yup. The problem with being a child prodigy is that eventually people catch up with you.

Charlotte Church vibes

[quote] ‘Alma’ is a pretty name for a female. It means ‘soul’ in Spanish.

It means whore in Austria

I can smell the rich parents from here.

This over-publicised child can write for the solo piano music but can't handle orchestral writing at all.

They treat the orchestra as an 'accompanist”.

Their orchestration is as simplistic and monotonous as this man's—

Britten could create a fascinating sonic world with just 20 players.

R53 he's no Me!

Why is she wasting her time on that shit? She should be concerned about climate change and use her voice for that.

R53 Dear God. Don't compare her to Robert Schumann

R54. Britten was one of the few true prodigies among great composers. However, his parents never exploited his precocious talents in any way. He only became known to the public once he was an adult.

What the fuck am I, chopped liver?

I find it curious that Alma's operas are all about fairytales. Hasn't she been interested by any topical stories?

[quote] fairytales

I have no interest in them but they provided a text for this genius at orchestration.

Her name screams Nazi.

Stereotype much, r62? Her father is a Jew from Israel.

Who cares? Everyone says her act is just dumbed down crap for the masses who have no interest in real classical music. She also sounds mentally ill like her father.

China’s got about a million 2 year olds who play better than she does. lol

She needs to team up with Greta Thunberg.

Who's "everyone", r64?

Pregnant teen in 3...2...1...

the snootiness and disdain likely comes from her parents.

It's the hallmarks of sheltered home schooled "prodigies"

such parents tend to refuse to let their children be children

and often cultivate this kind of attitude.

But often such children tend to have massive problems with integration as adults

thus most become burnouts or extremists.

She's in her teens. You're comparing her to adults who have more experience. She's still a child. If you want to shit on her because you've achieved nothing worthy of merit in your own lives then at least wait until she's reached adulthood, ffs, and not dump on her while she's still learning and honing her craft ffs..

I can’t imagine there being such a large enough teen opera fans audience going for someone to pick such a niche genre of music?

r71 minimal competition and access to high paying donors.

r71 well, there is competition.. but it's the stereotype of aiming for a certain caliber of patrons and old money. So, yes a novelty act. . . look up other examples of child geniuses and prodigies.. this is a stereotypical trope. The opposing extremes to the anti-capitalist rabble and their hatred of civilization. It's a Star Trek utopia where all of starfleet pisses over most everything but the trappings of rich and elite.

[quote] look up other examples of child geniuses and prodigies. … … …

Alma has been around for years, getting on with her thing. It's almost hilarious the way some twits have just heard of her think she's trying to access high-paying donors or whatever.

She's not "speaking from ignorance and bias", r33. She's simply fed up with the inexorable trend to force young composers to produce "modern" music.

She's not Austrian, she's a Briton studying in Vienna. It's possible she is somewhere on the autism spectrum because she had trouble focusing at school as a child, and so was home-schooled and also attended classes at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Far from exploiting her, her parents have tried to give her the freedom she needs to explore her talents and interests in a supportive, protective environment. She also hated being called a prodigy as a child. She has a younger sister who is also musical, although not to the same degree.

She's a fan of Jessiah, whoever he is (probably trying to get his attention).

Where are teen operas even performed?

R76. She is definitely ignorant and biased. I provided specific things she says that demonstrated her ignorance and bias that you didn’t even attempt to refute (e.g., Cole Porter being a “Hollywood” composer and references to the Darmstadt school, which hasn’t been a force for five decades).

She has extraordinary, although not unique, gifts, but she has limited creativity and almost no sophistication, knowledge of musical history, or maturity. Perhaps she will develop those qualities, but it is not right for her parents to put her before the public at such an early age and to use her as a spokesperson for their own uneducated beliefs. They should be nurturing and developing what talent she does have in private. As an adult, she can come before the public with what she can offer. So far, it doesnt appear she has developed much to offer. As, I have mentioned above, if you passed offer her works off as newly discovered works of a middle-aged 19th century kapellmeister, do you honestly think anyone would we be listening to them? No. The overwhelming draw of her music is that it is written by a child. It has little other interest.

She remains a complete simpleton in artistic matters. Serialism has not had a stranglehold on classical music for decades. It is definitely permissibly to write tonal music in today’s world, but for her there is only beautiful music and yucky modern music.

The difficulty for her is that she is an advocate for melody who happens to be a poor melodist. There are dozens of “modern” composers who had no fear of dissonance who vastly exceed her as a melodist—-Prokifiev, Stravinsky, Britten, etc.——and who have public appeal. There is a huge middle ground between her “beautiful” 19th century pastiche and dodecaphonic “noise” that she is either unaware of or is unwilling to acknowledge.

It is true that contemporary composers struggle to find a musical language that appeals to the public and that it is unlikely any composer living today is on the level of the great composers of the past. If so, that is a sign that classical music has possibly exhausted itself and that the age of original classical composition is over. It is not a sign that we need her mediocre regurgitation of past styles. There is a lot of great 19th century music we can listen to. We don’t need to hear them filtered through her limited compositional mind

Reading r78, I can understand entirely why Alma doesn't give a fuck.

Opera will die off with the Baby Boomers. None of the younger generations care about opera or classical music.

[quote] She's not Austrian, she's a Briton studying in Vienna.

DL is so odd when it comes to anyone with a drop of British blood or one British parent/relative or a British birthplace--as if that's enough to make them legitimately a Brit. That's...not how it works, really, sorry. Would be like me insisting that one of my old classmates who's got an American grandparent and was born in Texas but moved to Essex at age 4 and went to school/worked in the U.K. all his life is still an incorrigible Yank down to the bone and should emigrate back to the States, actually.

Alma is a culturally German-Austrian Jewish. Alma's father is Israeli, and speaks to her largely in Hebrew. Alma was never formally educated in British schools, but at home with her father and with remote help from European (not English) tutors. She then left the U.K. at age 12 with her parents and never went back to live or study. Her accent when speaking English is not naturalised. How British or English can she really be, then? Ok, she's got a U.K. passport and was born in an English hospital, but is that enough? She doesn't seem remotely interested in British culture or landscape or people or even composers, it's never referenced in her music (and that's absolutely fine, of course, it's her art and her life).

[quote] In 2018, Deutscher moved with her family to Vienna, which she has described as her "musical homeland". She explained to The New York Times in 2019: "I lived in England, but I grew up on the music of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Haydn. Musically speaking, I think that Vienna's always been my home.

How exactly does one become a Briton, if being born in Britain, growing up in Britain, having a British passport, having a British parent aren't enough to make one a Briton? You know it's possible simply to be a European as well as one's own nationality, as many in Europe are. It would be more daft to call Alma an Austrian. She's inspired by Viennese musical culture, but that doesn't make her Austrian or a product of Austria.

I listen to Mozart and jazz, but that doesn't mean I'm not British and my "real" cultural background is 18th-century Vienna with a hint of 1930s Harlem.

And, whatever personal accent Alma gives it, her native language is (British) English.

R79. She definitely doesn’t seem to give a fuck about music.

Haha. She has a full upcoming schedule playing music for cruise passengers.

R84 perhaps Alma is playing the long game, gunning for a sexy opera singer....

That's right r84, she's made no contribution to the world of music at all.

R87. Well, she’s made a contribution to Viking Cruise music.

Weird how DL bemoans the stupidity and lack of culture among young people, "all they care about is their phones and TikT0ks".

Yet when one shows profound interest in classical arts and even makes her own art inspired by it, it's no better than silly pretentious pastiche, and she's a freak for not TikT0king quietly to herself like the other kids.

What are we supposed to say. She just isn’t very good. And she’s criticising compositions vastly better than hers and therefore trying to discourage people from enjoying them. If what is left of classical is the kind of stuff she produces, the art form might as well die.

Here she is, tackling a Wurlitzer organ:

R2 do you think Alma exudes babydyke energy?

Alma Deutscher ≠ Rosemary Brown

[quote] There are dozens of “modern” composers who had no fear of dissonance who vastly exceed her as a melodist—-Prokifiev, Stravinsky, Britten, etc.——and who have public appeal.

What, and no mention of ME, you bitch???

Alma ‘hated being called a child prodigy’.

Surely any kid would, it doesn’t sound fun or like it’s any way to grow up and make friends. Plus, it’s condescending as a term.

Since no one has asked... does her pussy stink?

More adult passion might be what’s lacking in Deutscher’s music at the moment. Perhaps that will come with time.

BBC Radio 3’s composer of the week is the late Viennese teacher Johanna Müller-Hermann (aptly, a friend to Alma Mahler), and what I’m hearing in her string quartets is a lot of yearning and longing and desire. She was fairly contentedly married, but it’s clear from correspondence as well as her dedicated compositions that she had feelings of love or lust for one or more of her contemporaries.

One also wonders whether her disdain for atonal & modern music stems from a craving for structure and predictability.

Is Vienna waiting for her?

Hopefully she’s at least an admirer of more obscure 18th C. female composers, not just men. The last thing Classical music needs is Pickmeishas.

[quote] Teen opera composer

Has no one given us a link to an actual opera yet?

R100 here's the final scene and last song of her 'Cinderella' adaptation: