44 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



increased at any rate beyond the condition reached by the 

 lowest of existing savages. We have definite proofs of the 

 occurrence among savages of musical talent capable of the 

 same education as our own. We must therefore consider their 

 talent to be as high as ours, although it is generally hidden 

 because untrained during the life-time of its possessor. 



Negro races are certainly not at a very high stage of civili- 

 zation. We see this clearly by their utter carelessness of 

 human life, as shown in the dreadful massacres of the King of 

 Dahomey and other chiefs, by the state of servitude to which 

 women are subjected, and by the lack of real family life. But 

 in spite of these proofs of inferiority it has happened on many 

 occasions that negroes have attained to the full understanding 

 of our highest music. 



Brindis y Salas, a Cuban negro, who travelled as a violinist 

 through Europe and America, is a well-known proof of this. 

 He was not merely endowed with excellence of ' technique ' 

 along with delicacy of ear, but — as I am told by a distinguished 

 musician ^^ — 'he possessed musical abilities of a very high order. 

 His playing was that of an artist.' He must therefore have 

 had an inborn musical sense, as high in all essentials as that 

 of our greatest performers. It is impossible to urge the objec- 

 tion that his ancestors had been under European influence for 

 centuries, because such a period of time would be far too short 

 for the growth of a special part of the brain as the result of 

 inherited practice, and also because European music of a high 

 order does not reach the negroes of Cuba. 



Another example is aftbrded by the 'Jubilee Singers,' a 

 company of negro men and women, who in 1887 astonished 

 Europe by their ' very extraordinary performances in four-part 

 singing.' The authority, whose opinion I have already quoted, 

 judges from their performances that there is no doubt whatever 

 as to ' the talent of the negro nation for our music' 



We also find among European musicians and composers 

 many grounds for the belief that musical talent has not been 

 increased by practice in the course of civizilation. If this were 

 the case, highly gifted musicians would never have arisen 

 in families living, remote from the great influences of their 



^ This information was kindly placed at my disposal by Herr Otto 

 Lessmann, of Berlin, editor of the ' Allgemeine Musikzeitung.' 



