Six-year-old sets world record for recognising classical composers by ear
17 October 2025, 10:00
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The child named 16 composers in 60 seconds.
You may think you know your composers but get ready to be outshone by a six year old.
Dubai-born Shivankh Varun Varadharajan has broken the world record by correctly identifying 16 pieces by composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi in just one minute.
In the 60-second period, he also identified works by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, Rossini, Brahms, and Chopin.
His mother, Yalini, said he had always shown an interest in classical music, spending “hours” humming along to classic works, and favoured listening to the accompanying orchestral music of cartoons like Tom and Jerry, rather than watching the actual show.
“Shivankh can instantly recognise composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky and Debussy just by hearing a few seconds of their melodies,” she told The Violin Channel.
“He’s been doing this since he was about two and a half years old, and over time his ear for music became so sharp that he could even tell apart similar-sounding pieces, for example, identifying Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik versus Beethoven’s Für Elise within seconds.”
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The child not only recognises composers, but seems to understand the world through music.
Yalini said: “Sometimes he’ll say things like, ‘she was talking so fast, like Rimsky’, or ‘he’s calm, like Chopin’. That’s how he reads the world: through tone and rhythm.”
His family helped him prepare for the world record challenge by ensuring he practised naming composers within the one-minute time frame required for the accolade.
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“Recognising compositions was something he did naturally, anywhere, any time,” his mother said. “But there was a strict criteria: he had to identify a minimum number of composers within one minute, with randomised selections from the full list. For him, it was all fun,” she added. “He’d even point out when he made a tiny mistake and wanted to try one more time.
“One day, while a Bach piece was playing, he suddenly said ‘that’s Bach!’. I thought it was a coincidence at first, but it kept happening: with Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi and others,” she said. “As a neurodivergent child, Shivankh has always experienced the world a little differently.”
“Every child has a world inside them, sometimes you just have to pause long enough to see it,” Yalini said. “Listen more, compare less and let their uniqueness unfold naturally. Some gifts begin quietly, in small moments of passion or curiosity.”
