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Notes:


I define ability as the capacity to learn to be able to do something, with attention and practice, which cannot be done without ability. These somethings include writing poetry, watercolor painting, proving mathematical theorems, recognizing and describing flavors such as in wine, piloting an aircraft, and so on and on.

Everyone lacks some ability or another, meaning that in some area we cannot acquire the capacity to do a thing, even with diligent attention and practice.

We understand this from experience, especially if we teach. Instructor pilots have each met, on occasion, someone who earnestly wants to learn to fly but who, for any number of reasons, simply is unable to operate an aircraft with a safe degree of skill. Mathematics instructors often have students who lack sufficient interest to acquire satisfactory skill, but they also sometimes meet students who are simply unable to encompass the concepts despite effort and careful guidance.

But ability is not usually all or none, as we know from experience.

Musical ability is perhaps the area in which differences in ability are most obvious to everyone. Some people cannot even recognize tones correctly or cannot replicate rhythms. Others can remember and repeat long melodic passages and complex harmonies with little apparent effort. Still others can compose complex music, and at the far end of the scale of ability, are unique people like Mozart, from whom complex music simply flowed without apparent effort. As Mozart himself said, “I write music like a cow pisses.”