MUSICAL ABILITY 
Bases of it Inherited by Nearly Everyone—Difference in Ability Due More to 
Training Than to Heredity—Means for Bringing Latent 
Ability Into Expression 
Mrs. EVELYN FLETCHER Copp, Prookline, Mass. 
T IS generally supposed that musi- 
cians are born, not made. Amodern 
student of heredity, for example, 
writes of musical ability: 
“This quality is one that develops 
so early in the most marked cases that 
its innateness cannot be questioned. 
A Bach, matured at 22; a Beethoven, 
publishing his compositions at 13 anda 
Mendelssohn at 15;a Mozart, composing 
at 5 years, are the product of a peculiar 
protoplasm of whose tenacious qualities 
we get some notion when we learn 
that the Bach family comprised twenty 
eminent musicians and two-score others 
less eminent.” 
Following out this line of attack, let 
us look a little further for evidence that 
musical ability is innate. Of the Bach 
family I shall not speak, for its history 
is well-known: it presents an amount of 
musical genius unrivaled in history. 
But if we examine the ancestry of other 
great musicians, including some of those 
mentioned by the writer just quoted, we 
find little to indicate that their preem- 
inent musical ability was due to any 
extraordinary combination of heredity. 
Among such cases is Haydn. His 
father was a wheelwright, his mother 
had been a cook and, although both 
were fond of music, neither could be 
reckoned a musician as we diagnose the 
term. Schubert is another example; 
and the immortal Robert Schumann 
had. no ancestors who were even 
slightly addicted to music. Even the 
musicians who can point to a 
musical parent or grandparent have, 
in many striking instances, seemingly 
failed to transmit to their offspring 
even a trace of their stupendous ability. 
Another interesting point which strikes 
even the casual observer of the musicians 
of the past is that musical heredity 
seems to be anti-suffrage. When hered- 
ity might seem to have caused musical 
ability in the sons, the daughters seem 
usually not to have been extraordinarily 
benefited; and in this connection it is 
also of interest to note that, while 
many women have excelled as vocal or 
instrumental performers, the originality 
necessary to musical composition has 
been conspicuously lacking and there 
are no women who come even within 
hailing distance of Beethoven, Mozart, 
Handel and a dozen other men we might 
name. 
A COMMON INHERITANCE 
Now, I do not propose to argue from : 
these facts that musical ability is not a 
toatter of Jhetedity.. lf thimk iis. 7a 
matter of heredity, but that almost 
everyone possesses the heredity. Twenty 
years of teaching give me reason to 
believe that, although great genius will 
doubtless continue to be sporadic and 
unaccountable, real musical ability is 
much more common than has been 
supposed. Genius, like murder, will 
out. It cannot be suppressed by en- 
vironmental obstacles, but talent, often 
overlooked, may be discovered and 
brought to great perfection. It seems, 
indeed, that music, like poetry, may be 
a primal talent; that, as all children are 
born poets, they may also be born 
musicians and also, very similarly, that 
as 999% of humanity lose all poetic 
faculty during the years of early child- 
hood because of the artificial conditions 
of modern child life, so the very large 
majority of children lose their native 
musical ability through lack of training 
of the ear and mind during their most 
susceptible period. Education should 
come to the help of heredity to reclaim 
and develop man’s natural gift. 
We are all born with ears and they 
are formed for hearing as the eye is 
for seeing; they are, moreover, capable 
of hearing far more and better than they 
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