Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/489

Rh I have here selected some of the more striking instances of musical precocity. But the question still remains, What proportion of eminent musicians showed marked taste and ability as children? In order to answer this question I have gone through forty names. Of these I find that thirty-eight displayed a decided bent to the art before twenty. This is expressly stated in most cases, and in the rest is clearly inferred from the date of study, or of the first musical composition. The two excepted names are those of Palestrina and Tartini. Of the early life of the former little is known; but it is fairly inferable that he took up music in his youth. Tartini is the only instance I have met with of a first impulse to music showing itself after twenty. He is said to have first taken up the violin to relieve the monotony of cloister-life. But the story has a suspicious touch of romance about it.

Of the thirty-eight who were precocious to the extent just defined, I have ascertained that twenty-nine are said to have shown a musical gift as children. There is some reason to suppose that others betrayed musical skill toward the end of childhood (about twelve). So far as I can discover, only in the case of two of the nine exceptions is there reason to conclude that there was no marked manifestation of ability in childhood. These are (an odd juxtaposition) Rossini and Wagner. The former, says Brendel, though early subjected to musical discipline by his parents, themselves musicians, showed himself at first indocile and disinclined (abhold) to the art. Only in his seventeenth year does this distaste appear to have given way to genuine devotion. R. Wagner tells us that as a child he was not specially attracted to music, and that it was only when, at the age of fifteen, he made the acquaintance of Beethoven's symphonies, that he became inspired by a strong and overpowering passion for the art.

The date of a first musical composition is less easily obtainable than that of a first literary publication. I have managed to ascertain it in twenty-seven instances. Out of these, ten began to compose before the age of fifteen, fourteen more between fifteen and twenty, and only three after twenty.

If, now, we go on to examine into the age at which musical composers gave a distinct pledge of their greatness by a work of undoubted excellence, or at least of such merit as to win public recognition, we find much greater diversity. In some cases of early production the quality of the work was striking in itself and apart from the age in which it was produced. This applies to some of the most marvelous instances of precocity. Thus, Mozart, after gaining renown as a wonder-child by his symphonies, sonatas, etc., proceeded rapidly to lay the foundations of a lasting fame by operatic compositions. At the age of fourteen he acquired great popularity in Italy as an opera-writer, and by his nineteenth year had struck out his own original line in the opera, "La bella finta giardiniera." Mendelssohn was no less agile in