How much advantage does someone who starts piano lessons at age 5 have over someone who starts at age 10? It seems like most professional pianists started early and were known as prodigies.
There is a tiny book out there somewhere about the early lives of Nobel prize winners. I read it about 1980 or so. This book reported that an very high percentage of Nobel prize winners spent their preschool years in households where they were exposed to multiple languages and music daily.
Don’t assume the causation for the correlation. These people who start early just as likely do so because they find learning to play piano easier than the average person, or just had a desire to learn from a young age. I know I was considered young when I started at 6.
I can’t find it offhand, but I do remember a study saying that starting piano before their hands are ready for it is usually not beneficial. I can’t remember the exact ages, but I think it compared people who started at around 6 with 8, and there was no difference.
I would question whether most professional pianists were prodigies. Probably just a few that you happen to hear about the most were.
Studying music usually takes more maturity and commitment than a 5-year-old can manage, although there are certainly exceptions to that. As **BigT **says, the kids that do show that that are probably pretty driven to it and will, of course, do better than someone who is not as motivated.
I don’t know what difference there would be between starting at 5 vs. 10 if you looked at where they are at 22 or lifetime achievement. However, I would say that someone who starts studying music before they are a teenager gets a jump on someone who starts later. I think that learning music has been compared to learning language, which also gets better results if you start young.