<p>I would agree with what others have written, music composition is something that generally does happen later, and takes a lot of work to get proficient in it. Besides the fact that most ‘prodigies’ are in instrumental music (usually violin, cello or piano, simply because kids can play them earlier, and also because there isn’t that much cache in a composing prodigy as there is in having some little girl in a pink dress playing a violin concerto in Carnegie Hall), composition takes a lot of work in music theory (‘the mechanics’ as one composer called it), and also in simply listening to a variety of music to understand how composers translate ideas into music. Even coming out of grad programs, it seems to take composers a number of years to get there…</p>
<p>And many composers start late, maybe even later then you, so I wouldn’t sweat it, your folks are being, well, parents <em>smile</em>. If you were thinking of going into classical violin or piano getting ‘serious’ at your age, I would be saying something different,but for composition you aren’t ‘over the hill yet’ <em>lol</em>. One thing to keep in mind is that with composition I suspect that the people evaluating you are looking for potential, they don’t expect a student to be John Adams or Brahms, which is quite different then instrumental music in many cases (where high level programs assume the instrumentalist is already at a really high level, and they will be doing the tweaks to turn that into ‘supurb’).</p>
<p>And if you want to answer your parents about 5 year old prodigies, tell them you are quite proud not to have been one. The overwhelming majority of prodigies, the ones you see at age 8 playing the tchaikovsky violin concerto or whatever like some circus act, generally end up doing very little, most prodigies crash at an age younger then yourself, especially when they grow up and are no longer ‘cute’ (by my rough estimation, 99.9 percent of prodigies end up not amounting to much in music…). There is a difference between a child who starts young and works their way up through the reperatory and a prodigy, a significant one; prodigies are operating out of instinct IME, they don’t even really know how they can do what they do, and when they hit puberty that instinctive flair seems to disappear and they have to learn how to play again (Itzak Perlman talked about that, he said from the time he was about 13 to 18 he had to relearn to play; Yehudi Menuhin crashed when he was in his 20’s, and though still an incredible performer, lost the technical edge he had as a child prodigy, same with Janos Starker and others). Much better to find your passion later and have to work for it IMO then to be some sort of whiz at a young age and then struggle:)</p>