There’s no surefire way to become an elite violin soloist, but there’s one thing in particular you can do to help your odds: Be born to musician parents. Even then, you’re probably screwed. For Izabela Wagner’s study Producing Excellence: The Making of Virtuosos she interviewed nearly 100 prodigies, and what she found is best put by one former soloist, “For every ten students, one will attempt suicide, one will become mentally ill, two will become alcoholics, two will slam doors and jettison the violin out the window, three will work as violinists, and perhaps one will become a soloist.” For aspiring violinists and their parents—including Wagner herself—those are not good chances. Why would anyone choose that kind of life?

A five-year-old can choose a movie or an ice cream flavor, but the verb “to choose” is a stretch when it comes to a career path. Violin virtuosos have to choose their job at various points, but none of them makes the first choice to join the profession. No toddler holds a bow of their own volition; that choice belongs to the parents. In the early years of soloist-track training, parents are the “assistants” who initiate the child into playing, find an instructor, enforce the practice regimen, provide transportation, pay training costs, and navigate professional networks on their child’s behalf. A common violin teacher’s maxim that Wagner quotes is: “I do not need prodigy pupils, only gifted mothers.”

When we think about child music prodigies—among whom violinists are the most vaunted—we tend to think of a miraculous coincidence, a ray through the clouds from providence or the tumble of numbered balls in the genetic lottery. Some kids are born with special talents and with the right training and effort they can grow to play the violin very well. But virtuosos are made, not born, and as Wagner details there’s a market process for their production and distribution.

A child’s ability to successfully climb the violin ladder depends on a triad of actors: the performer him or herself, the parent, and the teacher. It’s a formulation that has been around for a hundred years, but the age at which kids begin has inched lower over time. The biographies of exceptional performers and childhood prodigies like Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Mischa Elman, and Sarah Chang inspired a generation of parents. In Wagner’s subject group, 79 percent began their studies before the age of seven. For a young would-be soloist, the most important quality is temperament. There are more than enough potentially capable children, but the number willing to spend hours a day practicing and forsake all other pursuits is smaller.

Producing Excellence could be an experimental novel about a mother who comes to realize through her research that she has made the gravest of errors.

In the early 20th century, eastern-European Jews dominated the upper ranks of the violin hierarchy. Wagner attributes their success to a number of specific cultural-historical factors (high interest in music, investment in formal education, knowledge of foreign language), not the least of which was fear of anti-Semitic violence. “The high status of conservatory students helped entire Jewish families of gifted pupils escape life in the ghetto,” Wagner writes, “enabling them to obtain permission to live in city centers where they were protected from pogroms.” The story about a talented young musician pulling his family out of the ghetto is an old one, and a child has always been the best asset some households have.