THE MUSICAL EAR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 11, 12 March 1892, Page 248

THE MUSICAL EAR.

The late Mr John Hullah said : I find, as a rule, that students can either tell sounds played or sung to them readily and certainly, or not at all. This might suggest the conclusion that the power of doing so was a natural gift. That it is largely dependent on race and family is certain, simply, as I Relieve, because among certain races and in certain families music has long been cultivated. Among varieties even of the most musical races with whom this has not been the case, musical aptitude will be found to die out. Thus the Celts of Wales, are, perhaps, the most musically apt of any people in Great Britain ; on the other hand, those of the Highlands of Scotland are the least so. I have never met with a Welsh student with what is called a defective ear. I have taken the utmost pains to get a Highland student to imitate even approximately the simplest succession of musical sounds, quite unsuccessfully ; and this not in one instance only, but in half a dozen consecutive instances. The cause is not far to seek. Music is an imitative art. From time immemorial the Welsh ear has been formed, consciously or unconsciously, by the harp, an iustrument not merely refined in its quality, but an instrument of harmony, and therefore, of necessity tuned oh the system which, with Europeans, use has made into a second nature. The Highland ear has been formed on the coarsest variety of one of the most imperfect even of monodic instruments, the bagpipe. Ido not give these as the only causes of the musical inequality of these two varieties of the same race, but as one of them, and that of itself a sufficient one.