X. THE INHERITANCE OF MUSICAL TALENT
The inheritance of musical talent has been investigated by Copp and by Stanton. The latter has made measurements of specific musical capacities in relatives of musicians, using Seashore’s tests. This is the beginning of adequate study of the inheritance of musical talent, as the method, though laborious, is correct.
Four of the Seashore measures of musical talent were given to eighty-five members of six unrelated family groups, starting in each group with a person conspicuously known as a musician. These measurements were supplemented by a set questionnaire, covering musical endowment, musical education and training, musical activity, musical appreciation, musical memory and imagination, the questionnaire including a larger number of relatives.
From these data, a study was made of the tendency of offspring to be musical or unmusical, in accordance with parentage and more remote ancestry. The results show that musical talent is inherited, and the investigator believes it not improbable that the formula of inheritance may be Mendelian. Much wider research would, however, be avowedly necessary, in order to establish the formula. It may or may not be Mendelian.
The offspring of a mating of musical with unmusical, of musical with musical, or of unmusical with unmusical, may thus inherit from either parent or from both parents, and apparently without regard to sex. Sex differences do not appear, either, in any of the tests of musical sensitivity, which have been standardized.
XI. PSYCHOGRAPHIC STUDY OF INDIVIDUALS
In order to illustrate concretely the way in which musical talent may or may not accompany other mental capacities, a few psychographic studies of individuals are presented, as follows.
The first is the psychograph of a girl, whom we may call G, aged 14 years. It shows her status in percentile ratings, on various mental and motor tests. G is of average, or typical, general intelligence, with superior rating in musical capacity, and in drawing.
G was brought for mental tests because she did poorly in the school where she was attending, receiving good marks in music and drawing only. The difficulty in keeping up to grade in general was readily explained, when the facts of school history were elicited. G was in a very exclusive private school, where the median IQ of the pupils is about 120, instead of 100 as among unselected pupils. This child, on account of the social status and educational traditions of her father’s family, had been competing all her school life in a highly selected group of children, and was now considered dull by teachers, by parents, and by herself. All were astounded to learn of G’s average intellectual capacity.
