46 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



a chorister in the little town of Hainburg, and had he not after- 

 wards entered the music-school in Vienna, of which Reutter, 

 the organist of the cathedral, was the head. Haydn possessed 

 musical talent of the highest order, but had it not been trained, 

 he could never have accomplished by himself the whole deve- 

 lopment of modern music from the national song ; he could 

 never have risen from the music of his parents to oratorios and 

 stringed quartettes. Such cases afford interesting evidence 

 that at least a great part of the development of modern music 

 can be accomplished^ in a lifetime, even when all the ancestors 

 have been strangers to the higher musical culture, so that it 

 was impossible for their musical sense to be raised by it. The 

 musical sense is evidently innate in the human brain, and is 

 independent of all training and practice undergone by ances- 

 tors. The predisposition may be strong or feeble, but even the 

 greatest talent does not enable the possessor to climb to the 

 height reached by the music of his time without being raised 

 by instruction. That so great a height can be reached in a 

 life-time by the son of a German peasant, or even by the 

 offspring of a savage race, evidently proves that the musical 

 sense of to-day has been inherent in man since times imme- 

 morial, and that it has not been increased by the development 

 of music or by practice. It has nevertheless been brought to a 

 higher stage of development in the most civilized races, as we 

 shall see further on. 



We have already seen that musical talent exists in every 

 stratum of society. And yet the upper classes have produced 

 many more eminent musicians than the lower, a fact which we 

 can easily understand when we remember that without early 

 stimulus, and the constant opportunity^ of hearing and being 

 instructed in the highest music, even the greatest genius must 

 remain undeveloped or, as we may say, latent. 



This is proved b}'' many examples : thus out of sixteen 

 renowned German musicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries, no fewer than eight were the sons of organists : the 

 others were the sons of peasants and labourers, but nearly all 

 were choristers when boys. Furthermore, twenty-seven of 

 the greatest German and Italian composers of the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries were the sons of musicians. Ex- 

 amples of these are afforded by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, 





