Like many 13-year-olds, he can sit for hours hunched over his computer, an Apple Macintosh G4 laptop. But Jay Greemberg isn't battling high-resolution monsters; he is composing his fifth symphony. He has about 150 fully orchestrated pieces on his hard drive and a further 300 completed works on manuscript paper.
Jay Greenberg is a child prodigy studying at the Juilliard School in New York City. Some of his professors claim he is the greatest composing talent in more than 200 years.
"He seems to have been born as if wired to understand music as a language, to not only read it, understand it and hear it in his head, but to write it and compose it," says Samuel Zyman, a professor at Juilliard. Such ability has naturally inspired comparisons with Mozart, whose earliest surviving work, an andante for piano, was written when he was six. "Jay can compose the entire piece in his head and then write it down as if he is copying it from somewhere, as if someone is dictating it to him," insists Zyman.
"I don't write a piece out before I start writing it," Jay says. "It probably all happens subconsciously because usually when I write things down, I don't erase very often."
He is currently working on a new commission for the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, a concerto for saxophone and percussion, a piece for chamber ensemble and his fifth symphony.
Although neither of Jay's parents is a professional musician, there is both intellect and artistry in his genes. His father, Robert, is a professor of Slavic studies who does play some piano; his mother, Orna, is a painter and sculptor. But they are as startled as anyone by Jay's astonishing ability. "At first we considered it as something of a hobby," says Orna. "Then we realised it was much more."
Jay was two years old when, after listening to a string quartet, he started drawing pictures of cellos and writing the word "cello" over and over. His parents rented a miniature cello for him and he soon started playing it. Opus 1 followed soon afterwards. Jay's ability to master musical forms - the sonata, the symphony - might help explain his facility with the mechanics and mathematics of musical language. Like Mozart and many other prodigies, he is also a gifted mathematician.
"I am still finding my own voice and I guess when I do find my true style I'll find forms to go with it," says Jay. When he demonstrates his fifth symphony at the piano, his melodies are reminiscent of Berlioz or Tchaikovsky, but his orchestrations owe more to 20th-century masters.
Professor Zyman believes Jay has the potential to develop his own musical voice.
Jay himself is coolly objective: "I don't play the piano nearly as well as Mozart could, I don't write the same kind of music and, also, I'm not Austrian."
