Bases of it Inherited by Nearly Everyone - Difference in
Ability Due More to Training Than to Heredity - Means for Bringing Latent
Ability Into Expression
Originally published in The Journal of Heredity, Volume
7, pages 297-305, July 1916
It is generally supposed that musicians are born, not made. A modern 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 and a 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 preeminent 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 heredity 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
matter of heredity. I think it is a 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 environmental
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 99% of humanity lose all poetic faculty during the years
of early childhood 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 are
accustomed to doing. We carry them around with us everywhere, but we really pay
very little attention to them. We let our children speak in a slip-shod,
indistinct way and we listen carelessly. We leave good talking and singing to
the professional musicians and orators, which is just as unreasonable as to
leave good seeing to the professional artist and poet. We are only just
beginning to learn what the normal ear is capable of, for instance in the matter
of Positive [absolute] Pitch, that is, ability to recognize and name
musical tones. The lay public has been accustomed to consider Positive Pitch as
a gift wrapped in the exclusive tissue of genius and doled out to the ultra
musical only. One who can enter a room where a musician is singing or playing
and say, "He is singing high C, or baritone B," has hitherto been looked upon as
a prodigy. This is by no means necessarily true. By proper training this power
may be acquired, speaking very conservatively, by 80% of normal children.
Children who have been thought to be entirely lacking in musical ability, some
of them apparently tone deaf, after a few months of training are able to sing
"Center C" on demand and to recognize it when it is played or sung and they soon
become equally familiar with the other musical tones.
ACQUIRING A SUPPOSEDLY INBORN GIFT
Positive Pitch-- the ability to name a musical note when it
is sounded-- has often been considered a rare, inborn trait which marked
its possessor as particularly fortunate in the inheritance of musical
ability. Recent evidence, however, indicates that it is by no means a
sharply inherited character, but a function of the mind which can be
acquired by almost anyone, with proper training. The children here
photographed are acquiring Positive Pitch in an interesting way: one of
them sounds notes on the piano, the two blindfolded ones name the notes,
and the boy at the table then locates them on the staff, by means of
wooden symbols. (Fig. 4.)
HUNDREDS OF CASES STUDIED
I base this statement on the experience of having taught some hundreds of
children; the corroborative experience of the teachers I have trained would add
hundreds more cases. Certainly I do not say that every one can acquire, by
training, this once mysterious gift of Positive Pitch, but I know that most
people can do so, if they begin at an early age.
This surely indicates that musical talent is much more widespread than has
been thought and that the cases we have quoted of the appearance of wonderful
ability in the children of seemingly non-musical parents, may be merely
instances of the inheritance of latent .characters.
Some children will, of course, not acquire Positive Pitch as quickly as
others. There are children who do not so easily learn to write English from
dictation as others; but do we therefore allow them to give up and say that they
cannot be taught? By the time he is ten or twelve any normal child can learn to
write correctly from dictation five hundred words or more. Now, taking every
white and black key on the piano there are only eighty-eight. Given a fair
chance and a mind unmesmerized by the idea that reading music and Positive Pitch
are difficult and require special gift, a child may as easily see mentally the
sign for any sound as he sees the words that he hears you dictate to him in
English.
That the results of music study have hitherto been so meager is due to
parental indifference and the faultiness of the methods of teaching music.
Teachers have insisted that the child should not be allowed to play the piano by
ear, claiming that this will ruin his musical ear and make reading by sight
impossible! Fancy a mother fearing that if her child speaks English first by
ear, he will never learn to read it! As music is primarily an art making its
first and greatest appeal through the ear, it is unreasonable to suppress the
interest and initiative which naturally appear first through the ear and then,
later on, by laborious ear training lessons to try to get back the interest and
power which we have ignored during the most formative period of the child's
life.
MUSIC EASILY ACQUIRED
The acquirement of musical education is or should be comparatively easy, not
only because of the smallness of the musical vocabulary (consisting as we have
said of only eighty-eight tones), but also because of the universality of its
notation. The present system of musical notation, though perhaps not perfect,
has this great advantage, that it is the same all over the civilized world, so
that when one learns it in America, the musical thoughts of France, Spain,
Germany, Italy or Russia are equally accessible. A child learns to read English
easily and well during the first six years of his school life (that is from the
age of six to twelve); he might just as easily learn during the same time to
read fearlessly and well the universal language of Music.
If you were to visit a public school and express surprise that the
wash-woman's daughter reads as well as the child of your own cultured neighbor,
you would be told that "thanks to the System," the advantages of birth are being
wonderfully counterbalanced; that, though the effects of a few generations of
culture may tell in other ways, no one is dependent upon his forefathers for
ability to read, spell or write. Scientific teaching makes these things possible
to all mankind.
Exactly as normal is the ability to learn to read and think music.
The first conclusion, then, which I venture to lay before students of
heredity, is that they have, with the material at present available, no proper
ground for drawing conclusions as to the distribution of musical talent in the
population; because there is a great deal which is merely latent, having been
denied the possibility of expression. The inheritance of a trait and the
expression of a trait are two different things. No student of heredity would
consciously ignore the distinction, but in the study of the inheritance of
musical ability they have unconsciously ignored it, and therefore their results
do not correspond with the reality.
Time and again, as I have said, I have taken children from families where
there was apparently no musical ability, and where the child himself was
supposed to be utterly deficient in music. The student of heredity, I fear,
would unhesitatingly have set down such a child as non-musical because of
failure to inherit the prerequisites. Yet this child, after being educated in a
natural manner, has acquired Positive Pitch, has learned to compose, to express
his own feelings musically, and to analyze compositions which would baffle many
teachers.
Thus, although a child may come from a supposedly unmusical family, it by no
means follows that the child cannot develop musical ability of a high order. On
the other hand, what of the cases where the child of two musical parents fails
to show talent?
I have in mind one striking case of this sort which I met years ago. The
father was a pianist of international renown, the mother a gifted musician. They
hoped, of course, that their child, with its double inheritance, would surpass
either one of them: they confidently expected such a result. The child was set
to studying music at an early age, but made no progress whatever; he was
declared to be dull, uninterested, hopeless.
I was naturally curious to find the reason for this state of affairs: and
they were not hard to find. Almost the first inquiry I made disclosed the fact
that the child showed a dislike for tedious hours of practicing, and was
therefore frequently shut up in a dark closet for an hour or two at a time, to
instill in him a greater love for his lessons, and a spirit more obedient to the
wishes of his parents. Small wonder that he lost interest in music; and without
interest, without an eagerness to learn, little can be done. But where the
interest and will exist, it is an unusually defective child that cannot acquire
a considerable amount of musical ability; and the same to a less extent holds
good of adults. Perhaps it may be of interest; I'll explain in a
little detail the views on this point to which twenty years of teaching have
brought me.
If the motive for studying music be made clear and the method of teaching he
sound, we may count confidently on the results. Browning says, "It is better
Youth should strive, through acts uncouth, towards making, than repose on aught
found made." We have made the mistake in music teaching in the past of putting
the finished product of another's mind before our children and forcing them to
copy it. Behind this mistake is the wrong motive. The main idea was to force the
child to copy, parrot-like, at the earliest possible moment, the thoughts of
some one else. Music was looked upon merely as a means of adornment, as
something to be plastered on the outside to add to the attractiveness of the
child. The motive is altogether wrong. Not slavery to someone else's ideas but
freedom to express one's own ideas should be the aim. Watch a tiny child seated
on his mother's knee. She has been playing and he has been told to keep his
little paddies on her wrists, but presently he pushes her hands aside and
substitutes for the beautiful composition his own incoherent pattings and
poundings of the keys, striving "through sounds uncouth" to express himself;
but, alas! he is stopped. It is as though a two-year-old should toddle to his
mother and stammer with his crooked little tongue, "See, mama, ye sun is playing
hide and go seek wif me," and the mother should say, "You must not talk that
way, my child. You should say, as Homer writes, ‘Lo! Dawn the rosyfingered, opes
wide the gates of Day.'" What would be the effect of this classical method of
teaching English upon one's joy and proficiency in acquiring the mother tongue?
LEARNING THE TIME-DIVISIONS OF MUSIC
A sense of rhythm has long been considered innate, but recently
psychologists have brought forward some evidence to indicate that it may
be merely the result of early training. Whether this be true or not, it is
certain that many persons have a defective feeling for and knowledge of
the timedivisions of modern music. Children are now being taught the
value of half-notes, quarter-notes, rests, etc. by means of blocks of
various lengths, and the mental conception of these things becomes so
clear and simple that they are allowed to give physical expression to what
they have easily understood, by marching, clapping and acting the musical
passage. (Fig. 5.)
METHODS OF EDUCATION
The motive, then, for learning musical notation must he for the purpose of
freeing the child by giving him the means of expressing his own ideas on paper
as well as giving him pleasure in reading easily and joyfully the thoughts of
others. The means used for the attainment of these ends are most important. They
must cultivate as many of the child's senses as possible. If he can feel the
symbols as well as see them; if he may see them in a big, tangible form; then
through this touch contact and through this ready sight, it occurs to him to
place the symbols thus and so and then to find out on the piano what the symbols
so placed by himself will express when sounded.
We, therefore, give the child notes of heroic size to play with and a
loose-noted key board to take to pieces and become familiar with by putting
together again. We have further invented games which call into play qualities of
mind the lack of which has wrecked many a musician in the past; games which
cultivate the ability to think calmly, coherently and quickly before others,
games which require rapidity of thought and action and which develop
unselfishness, generosity and balance, mental, emotional and technical. It was
not music which made for the lack of these qualities as has often been
insinuated; it was a lack of the most valuable traits of a true musician, missed
by acquiring a certain musical veneer without real, scientific, educational
growth.
In the past to be a musician was almost a synonym for being characterized by
nervousness, lack of balance, general peculiarity and uselessness in practical
life; but, to repeat, these deficiencies were not because of music but rather
proved a lack of musical development in its entirety.
If we will consider music as a language, not so much of the intellect, as of
that finer, higher, more spiritual part of us, a language which this soul of
ours needs; and if we will then consider all the sensible things we do to
acquire other languages and try these same things for the attainment of the
musical language, we may make some interesting discoveries. When a 5-year-old
child speaks English it is because he has thought it and has his own thoughts to
express. First in music, then, a child should be led to think his own music, to
speak his own music before he is taught to copy. He cannot become an independent
thinker by first being wholly and solely a copyist. Improvising and modulation
in music are equivalent in English to power to express the sense contained in a
prose paragraph or in a verse. It is like taking six adjectives, three nouns,
two verbs, and three prepositions and making a sentence out of them. These
rudimentary exercises in English lead to more or less freedom in the art of
expression of ideas if we have any to express later on. We do not say at the
outset that there is no earthly use in having the child participate in such and
such exercises because he will never be an author; the being an author is
submerged in the practical usefulness of self-expression. Precisely the same
attitude should be taken in regard to music if it is to be allowed to do the
good and be the good to us that it may be. When we take an idea from a poem or
an essay and express it in our own words, we are improvising in English. Are we
never to do this in music? Can we get nothing except the literal thought word
for word as we read it?
A LESSON IN MODULATION
As against the view of extreme eugenicists, that musical
ability is an inherited trait, which you either do or do not get from your
parents, many psychologists claim that music is a universal, natural
method of self-expression, and that every normal individual possesses the
ability to develop it just as he possesses the ability to develop the
power of expressing himself in English, or whatever his mother tongue may
be. The numerous individuals who are considered or consider themselves
"absolutely unmusical" are held to be the results of lack of education, or
wrong methods of education, in this form of expression. Mrs. FletcherCopp
has found that children, if allowed to develop their ability in a natural
way, can soon reach achievements that many adults of long training cannot
surpass. This photograph shows one of her means of teaching children
modulation. By this simple piece of apparatus, on which different chords
can be represented by movable pegs, no less than fifteen different simple
ways of modulating can be easily taught to any child. With such a stock of
experience, he will know more than the average teacher. Of 700 music
teachers, Mrs. Fletcher-Copp says she found only three who could modulate
easily and happily, and they did not pretend to understand what they were
doing. (Fig. 6.)
THE VALUE OF MUSIC
The value of learning music is not in the number of pieces one may play, but
in the musical thoughts one can think. Real music is self-expression and, far
from making the child self-centered, it should make him most sympathetic of the
efforts of others. A child who has made his own Reverie or dream has the keenest
appreciation of a "real composer." We know that to trim a hat does not cause one
to be unappreciative, but the reverse, of a well-trimmed hat. So it is with
cake-making, dress-making, story-making, poem- and music-making. We do not
complain because so few of the boys and girls, who during their school days
wrote essays on "The Dog," "Our Country's Flag" or "A Visit to Grandmother,"
fail to become authors or authoresses. We are satisfied if they are able to
express themselves well in spoken or written language as required by the demands
of every-day life. But there are times when every human being feels the need of
a language beyond the power of words. Plato said, "Music is to the mind what air
is to the body." Now air is a necessity but we moderns have not believed music
to be a necessity. We have considered it merely an accomplishment. How much more
it might be! Just the other day a boy of 13 brought to me the little composition
which is reproduced in Fig. 7. He had seen the picture weeks before of a lonely
Indian standing against the sunset sky, gazing in calm desperation into the
ocean at his feet. This would be the next move if he were ordered further west.
The picture was called "The Last Outpost" and it stirred up feelings in the
boy's heart which presently got out on paper (much the safest, healthiest place
for them) in the form of this little composition. This is only one example of
oh, so many natural outbursts of feeling in music.
COMPOSITION OF A 13-YEAR-OLD BOY
Acting on the principle that music is as natural a form of
self-expression as are words, Mrs. Fletcher-Copp tries to get children to
express their feelings in this way. The above composition represents the
thought of a 13-year old boy after studying a picture called "The Last
Outpost," in which an Indian who has been driven from the ancestral
hunting-ground of his tribe contemplates the waters
of the Pacific with the thought that if he is again forced by the white
man to move, it can only be into the ocean. (Fig. 7.)
Every human being feels at some time or other the need of music, but this
music which he needs is not the artificial substitute which has usurped the
place of the real thing. Music can be to each only what he is capable of
hearing, feeling and understanding. Therefore when one sits at the piano and
plays a Beethoven Sonata which one cannot think, cannot analyze, cannot mentally
hear--plays exactly in the manner of the Herr Professor--one is exemplifying the
parrot in music and this is an unsatisfactory accepting of the unreal for the
real, which gets us nowhere. Man is not the sum total of his words but of his
thoughts and it behooves us to stop copying words, words, words in music and to
begin to think and to express ourselves.
When we really believe what we say, that "nothing is too good for the
American child," we shall give him eight years' training in the public school in
self-expression in music and the results will prove beyond cavil the source and
cause and meaning of music. They will also, I am sure, leave no ground for the
belief now entertained by some geneticists, that musical ability is a rare "unit
character" due, as has been alleged, to some "defect in the protoplasm" which
only a few families possess; they will show on a large scale what my own
experience has already made clear to me, that musical ability is part of the
universal inheritance of man, just as the ability to talk is, and that the
differences between individuals in respect to it are due much more to training
than to differences in the heredity.
