Figure 1.--The destinguised French muscician Robert Benzi was a child prodigy conductor, directing major orchestras when still a teenager. He was born in Marseilles, France, during 1937. He is of Italian origin. He looks to be about 12-13 years old here meaning that the photograph was taken about 1950.

There are many famous child music prodigies. The most famous is certainly Mozart in the 18th Century, but there have been many others in the 19th and 20th Century. The clothing they wore for their performances were often examples of contemporary formal boys' clothing. Often as they began to grow up their parents liked to keep dressing them in juvenile clothes to emphasize that they were childhood prodigies. We have just begun this page and would be interested in any comments or contributions by HBC viewers, especially if you know of any other child prodigies that swe should list. Here are the child prodigies that we know of and what we know about their careers as prodigies.

Individuals

Prodigies A-D

Prodigies E-L

Prodigies M-R

Prodigies S-Z

Gender

One noticeable observation about individual prodigies is that they are mostly boys. Now this was understandable through the 19th century when so much more effort was put on the education and a=training of boys.. But this began to change even in the late-19th century and especially in the 20th century. You would expect a much more even divide between boy and girl prodigies. And at the risk of driving the woke mob into an apologetic seizure, it is worth pointing out that it it is not just music, but also highly academic areas like math and science where men tend to be the bulk of the outstanding figures, such as Nobel Prize laureates. Again understandable through the 19th century and even much of the 20th century when more emphasis was placed on boys' education. But for some time now, girls have been the notable majority of young people enrolling in university, so you would expect to see an increasingly even divide if not predominance of women as outstanding figures. This is one of several areas in which the woke mob is intent on stifling debate. Even bringingup up the subject can ruin a person's career. Larry Summers, for example, was run out of Harvard when he dared to note that boys seem to do better at math than girls. What could be more hostile to the traditions of open debate in universities or free speech in America.

Related Chronolgy Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Main Chronology Page]
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[The 1960s] [The 1970s] [The 1980s]

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Created: December 31, 1998
Last updated: 12:37 PM 11/11/2023