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被媒体称为“Human iPod”,被世界音乐界视为“令人不可思议的音乐天才”的他却是一个有严重智障的盲人。于是,有人刻薄地称他为“白痴天才”。但他的出现无疑让我们不得不面对这样的问题:究竟什么才是天才?
Derek: The thing I’d like to do most of all is to play the piano. Yep.
Derek Paravicini is completely blind and severely learning 1)impaired.
Derek: I’m going to do Flight of the Bumblebee, by Rimsky-Korsakov.
He also displays many of the signs of 2)autism. Yet his brain is a perfectly programmed musical computer. What does it mean to be a musical genius in the wake of such a profound disability?
Derek is 26. He doesn’t know his left from right, and can barely count to ten. Like many people who cannot see, Derek has developed an 3)acute sense of hearing. Most of us, without knowing it, filter the noise around us to make sense of our environment, but Derek seems to have no filter at all.
As the train gathers pace, Derek is actually translating the changing 4)pitch of the engine into precise musical notes.
Derek: E. F. A minor. I’d like to play someMozart .
Derek’s talent is clear, but it raises questions. Where does genius like this come from? And, how can it possibly co-exist with such severe disabilities?
Derek’s problems began when he was born three and a half months prematurely. His family had little hope that Derek would ever be able to communicate meaningfully until, at the age of two, something extraordinary happened.
Derek’s Father: In the hall (of a school for the blind) there was a piano lesson going on and Derek broke free and ran straight towards the piano, as if he could see, pushed the little girls having a piano lesson. He pushed her out the way, tried to take over.
The piano teacher that day was Adam (Ockelford).
Adam: So he just freed himself from 5)Nick and Maryann and he just started to play. He was using not only his fingers, but also the backs of his hands. 6)Karate chops. Elbows for the phonics. And occasionally he’d dip forward and use his nose as well.
Since then, Adam has devoted thousands of hours to nurturing Derek’s talent. And it wasn’t long before Derek was acknowledged worldwide as a 7)bona fide musical prodigy.
Derek’s brain is now almost exclusively dedicated to hearing, processing and creating music. Derek possesses an extremely rare gift of universal, absolute pitch. Which means he is able to 8)discriminate every note he hears, much as we recognize different colours.
But not only can Derek clearly perceive every different note, but he can do this even when they are played 9)simultaneously. He is about to listen to a sequence of chords that he has never heard before, and this time played by a full orchestra. Fifty instruments are playing dozens of notes all at the same time. Almost incredibly, Derek is able to distill the essence of all he hears into what he plays. Derek’s brain must be wired very differently from the rest of us.
Today, Derek is traveling to Sheffield with his old friend and mentor, Dr. Adam Ockelford.Through Adam’s 10)painstaking efforts, Derek has transformed his extraordinary gift into a language all of his own. And today he speaks it 11)eloquently.
Derek: The thing I’d like to do most of all is to play the piano. Yep.
Derek Paravicini is completely blind and severely learning 1)impaired.
Derek: I’m going to do Flight of the Bumblebee, by Rimsky-Korsakov.
He also displays many of the signs of 2)autism. Yet his brain is a perfectly programmed musical computer. What does it mean to be a musical genius in the wake of such a profound disability?
Derek is 26. He doesn’t know his left from right, and can barely count to ten. Like many people who cannot see, Derek has developed an 3)acute sense of hearing. Most of us, without knowing it, filter the noise around us to make sense of our environment, but Derek seems to have no filter at all.
As the train gathers pace, Derek is actually translating the changing 4)pitch of the engine into precise musical notes.
Derek: E. F. A minor. I’d like to play someMozart .
Derek’s talent is clear, but it raises questions. Where does genius like this come from? And, how can it possibly co-exist with such severe disabilities?
Derek’s problems began when he was born three and a half months prematurely. His family had little hope that Derek would ever be able to communicate meaningfully until, at the age of two, something extraordinary happened.
Derek’s Father: In the hall (of a school for the blind) there was a piano lesson going on and Derek broke free and ran straight towards the piano, as if he could see, pushed the little girls having a piano lesson. He pushed her out the way, tried to take over.
The piano teacher that day was Adam (Ockelford).
Adam: So he just freed himself from 5)Nick and Maryann and he just started to play. He was using not only his fingers, but also the backs of his hands. 6)Karate chops. Elbows for the phonics. And occasionally he’d dip forward and use his nose as well.
Since then, Adam has devoted thousands of hours to nurturing Derek’s talent. And it wasn’t long before Derek was acknowledged worldwide as a 7)bona fide musical prodigy.
Derek’s brain is now almost exclusively dedicated to hearing, processing and creating music. Derek possesses an extremely rare gift of universal, absolute pitch. Which means he is able to 8)discriminate every note he hears, much as we recognize different colours.
But not only can Derek clearly perceive every different note, but he can do this even when they are played 9)simultaneously. He is about to listen to a sequence of chords that he has never heard before, and this time played by a full orchestra. Fifty instruments are playing dozens of notes all at the same time. Almost incredibly, Derek is able to distill the essence of all he hears into what he plays. Derek’s brain must be wired very differently from the rest of us.
Today, Derek is traveling to Sheffield with his old friend and mentor, Dr. Adam Ockelford.Through Adam’s 10)painstaking efforts, Derek has transformed his extraordinary gift into a language all of his own. And today he speaks it 11)eloquently.