At first sight, Alma Deutscher, a twelve-year-old girl from England appears to be like any other typical pre-teen. She loves to skip rope, read and play with her younger sister. But this modest youngster, who composed her first musical work at age six, first short opera at age seven, and first full-length opera based on Cinderella at age ten, is anything but average. Though her parents downplay her extraordinary talent, young Alma is being described as “little Mozart” by the music world

Alma's operatic take on the classic fairy tale, which she began writing at age eight, has a slight twist. Her Cinderella is a musician who meets her Prince Charming through a song. “In my Cinderella, she sings the beginning of a ballad — but at midnight she flees. Eventually, the prince finds her after asking all the maidens of the land to sing the end of the ballad.”

The opera was first performed in Vienna, Australia on December 29, 2016, where the then eleven-year-old skillfully switched between the piano and the violin and receives enthusiastic reviews. The young genius has since performed two new piano works, once in Australia and the other in China.

While this may appear to be a lot for someone so young, Alma is not worried. She says, “of course I have to work hard. But all children have to work hard for exams, and at least when I work hard, I work hard for something incredibly exciting, like seeing my whole opera put on stage.”

Alma's musical talent first came to light before she could even talk. Her parents recall that as an 18-month-old toddler, she was able to hum a pitch perfect version of the children’s rhyme

However, Alma’s abilities only gained international attention in 2012, after a family friend posted a video online comparing her to Mozart. The family was suddenly swamped with media requested and Alma became an overnight star, dubbed “little Mozart”. This nickname makes her parents unhappy because they believe it puts added pressure on the young girl. They would instead prefer her to be called “a composer and musician”.

Alma does not want to be compared to the famous artist either, saying, “There was only one Mozart, and I prefer to be little Alma.” Regardless of what she calls herself, the twelve-year-old is changing the world of music forever!

A broken heart and a sad ending to a long friendship. That’s something most of us have experienced, or probably will. After all, it’s part of human life. But the experience can be hard to get over.

But research shows there are pathways through the heartache. Listening to sad music is a major one. It can help you begin to feel joy and hopefulness about your life again. It can arouse (激起) the desire to connect with others.

Sad music can help heal (治愈) and uplift you from your broken heart. A recent study from Germany found the emotional influence of listening to sad music is an arousal of feelings of empathy (同情), and a desire for positive connection with others. That, itself, is psychologically healing. It draws you away from concentration on yourself, and possibly towards helping others in need of comfort.

Another experiment, from the University of Kent, found that when people were experiencing sadness, listening to music that was “beautiful but sad” improved their mood. In fact, it did so when the person first consciously accept the situation causing their sadness, and then began listening to the sad music. That is, when they intended that the sad music might help, they found that it did.

These findings link with other studies that show accepting your sad situation emotionally leads to healing and growth beyond it. It seems unbelievable but it does make sense. For example, research from Cornell University found that accepting discomfort about a life experience or new situation, and viewing it as a step towards growth and change, encourages people to find a pathway through it, beyond it. As Churchill famously said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” That discomfort points you towards creating a plan, a new action. It brings hope.

Robots and humans will soon be living in harmony(和睦).A singing robot is being taught to create jazz with a human in a project.

Antonio Chella from Italy is working with a Telenoid robot. To start with, the Telenoid will be trained to follow the movements and simple sounds made by a human singer, and to connect music with different emotional states. Chella then plans to see if the robot can use these connections to create music.

Intelligence is often regarded as the ability to find connections between the existing things. But Chella suggests that a conscious(有意识的) creature should be able to go a step further and introduce new connections that result in the creation of something new.

Some jazz musicians say that they should have a mental library of musical phrases so that they are able to combine them in new ways. More importantly, however, this combination   happens in a state that is similar in a sense to dreaming. Chella wants to copy these states in a machine.

“This work raises interesting questions about the link between consciousness and music making,” says Philippe Pasquier, a musician and computer scientist. But he is skeptical about whether a robot musician needs a physical body.

Pasquier argues that the robots are faced with two challenges(挑战). Software that can copy Bach has already been developed. But interpretation（演绎）includes human’s different tastes and judgments. “What made the Beatles famous was not so much their works, but the fact that the interpretations of the works were wonderful,” he says.

It is not yet clear how a robot would go about interpreting music in a new way. But by copying humans and then learning to sing, Chella’s robot could provide clues.

What seems to be important is that human composers often listen to lots of music made by others. So Chella’s robot had better listen to those jazz standards first.