Now that gift for music may have come down to him from some distant foreparent, living in an age when such a quality had no outlet. Or it may have come down to him from some foreparent who lacked ambition or energy to use it in a striking way.
It happens very often that a son inherits his finest intellectual and emotional qualities from his mother.
And we know that a talent of any kind is more likely to lie dormant in a woman than in a man. For the woman may spend all her time and attention upon her home, her husband, her children.
I knew a case in which two sisters possessed considerable artistic talent Yet, so far as anyone knew, none of their foreparents had shown artistic ability. But one of the sisters told me that her mother had a remarkable gift for drawing, which she had never used, "except to amuse her children."
Now, when we come to look into the case of Handel, we find that his father's family never gave any sign of musical talent But of his mother's family, and of the families of his grandmother and great-grandmother we know little.
But Handel's father was ambitious and energetic, and his mother is described as follows:
The mother was thirty-three years old, and, we are told, was "clear-minded, of strong piety, with a great knowledge of the Bible... a capable manager, earnest, and of pleasant manners."
Is there any proof that Handel's mother had not a good musical ear? None. Is there any proof that she had not, lying dormant, some special gift for music, inherited from some ancestor? None.
In that day, and in that part of Germany, music was set little store by, and musicians were regarded much as actors were in England. Therefore any great musical gift which happened to be inherited by a woman would have small chance of being developed or used. And it is quite possible that Handel may have inherited his ear from his mother's family.
Again, the musical talent may have been a quality that had been improving by marriage for several generations. Or it may have been an accident, due to some physical process about which we cannot possibly have any direct knowledge.