62 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



ordinary hearing of such people must be imperfect and their 

 auditory apparatus abnormal in structure. 



The meaning of the word 'unmusical' is merely relative. 

 Mozart possessed such a wonderful memory for absolute pitch 

 that he once remarked, directly he began to play his own violin, 

 that it was tuned half of a quarter-tone higher than one he had 

 played two days before. But many people, although admitted 

 to be very musical, have the feeblest memory, or almost none 

 at all, for absolute pitch. They cannot tell whether the per- 

 formance they are listening to is in the key of A, C, or F : their 

 memory deals with intervals alone, and they are satisfied if 

 only the relations of the notes in any piece of music are correct. 

 This is certainly often due to want of practice, and it is also 

 connected with the important part played by the pianoforte in 

 the musical education of mankind. The note A is much more 

 firmly fixed in the mind of a violinist and has a far more indi- 

 vidual character for him than any particular note of the pianoforte 

 scale has for the pianist. But it is equally certain that there are 

 also differences of talent as regards thememory for absolute pitch. 

 Leaving the greatest heights of musical genius, we find that the 

 perception of intervals may also be deficient, and that such 

 deficiency increases gradually in different individuals until we 

 reach a case like that described by Grant Allen in which the 

 notes sounded by two successive keys on the piano seem to be 

 absolutely the same. Such defects in hearing can only be 

 explained by some imperfection in the structure of the auditory 

 organ, in this case in the organ of Corti. Hence such an auditory 

 organ would not represent what we may suppose to have been 

 the primitive ear of man before he began to be musical ; it is 

 merely an example of degeneration. A perfectly normal 

 auditory organ must always be musical, and this not only with 

 regard to the perception of intervals, but* also to the recognition 

 of absolute pitch. For even animals must possess the power of 

 distinguishing a note as higher or lower than some other note 

 of which the pitch is retained in their memory, and if they were 

 incapable of this they would be exposed to countless dangerous 

 mistakes. We certainly cannot regard the ear of Mozart as 

 the primitive normal ear of mankind ; we must rather regard 

 it as an abnormaUty as much above the average as the ear of 

 a moderately unmusical person is below it. But even Grant 



