X.] IN ANIMALS AND MAN 45 



time, in places wliere the only music consisted of national 

 songs accompanied by the guitar or the zither. But, not un- 

 commonly, from these very surroundings have come men 

 with a highly developed musical sense, and even celebrated 

 composers. Martin Luther, who is known to have been a 

 composer, was the son of a poor miner. Palestrina was the 

 son of a peasant. Jacob Callwitz, a sixteenth century 

 composer, was the son of a labourer, and Joseph Fux, who 

 composed in the seventeenth century, was the son of a Styrian 

 peasant. Cimarosa was the son of a washerwom.an near 

 Naples : John Gottlieb Naumann, a renowned composer of the 

 eighteenth century, was of peasant extraction, as also was 

 Joachim Quanz. The first known ancestor of the Bach famil}^ 

 was born in 1550, in the country near Gotha, and worked all his 

 life as a miller in Wechmar, his native place. Joseph Haydn 

 was also born in a village, and was the son of a poor wheel- 

 wright. 



In these instances we cannot maintain that all this musical 

 genius sprang out of the earth suddenly and without prepara- 

 tion. On the contrary, I wish to point, for example, to Haydn, 

 whose parents we certainly know to have been musical. The}' 

 sang when they rested from work, and the father accompanied 

 on the harp. The above-mentioned founder of the Bachs also 

 frequently played on the cythringen, a kind of guitar, which he 

 brought home to the mill from his travels. Sebastian Bach says 

 that ' this was, as it were, the beginning of the music of his 

 descendants.' The highest musical culture of their time was 

 entirely without influence on the musical sense of the ancestors 

 of these two great musicians ; the talent existed nevertheless, 

 and appeared in the descendants, sometimes to an increased 

 and sometimes to a diminished extent. 



It is no real objection to this argument to urge that only 

 a few out of the large number of musicians in recent centuries 

 came from the lower orders. A great musician not only needs 

 the highest talent, but also stimulus and all the culture that his 

 times can bestow. I previously assumed that the invention of 

 two-part singing would be the highest achievement possible 

 for our supposed Samoan Mozart, and we may safely con- 

 clude that Joseph Haydn would never have surpassed his 

 father's national songs and harp had he not chanced to become 



