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someone who had also been a child composer: Mozart s son is the only such
person in the Checklist, although one could add Scriabin s son Julian (1908
Common Characteristics of Child Composers 55
19), who composed several pieces before drowning at the age of eleven.
Having two children compose within the same family is also rare: the only
examples noted are Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and Nadia and Lili Bou-
langer, though neither Nadia nor Lili composed much as children. Schumann
and his wife, Clara, were both child composers, but none of their children
were. More typical is the Aspull or the Alkan family, in which several children
developed as professional musicians, but only one actually composed as a child.
George Aspull was one of ten brothers, all of whom were said to be above
average musically,1 but he was the only one to show an early inclination and
flair for composition; only one other brother, William, composed a little at a
later age. Alkan had four younger brothers and an elder sister who all became
musicians, but again he was the only sibling to compose as a child, though two
others did as adults. Other child composers siblings who did not compose as
children but became musicians and perhaps composers as adults include Daniel
Purcell, Charles Wesley the younger, and Nannerl Mozart. More often none
of the siblings composed (Medtner, for example, had four surviving siblings
but none composed), and in some cases the composer was an only child or
only surviving child.
A few children were lucky enough to have a musical older sister who
could (and often did) provide help and encouragement. This applies to several
notable child composers, whose elder sisters include Nannerl Mozart, Fanny
Mendelssohn, Mary Jane Ouseley, and Nadia Boulanger, but it was not a par-
ticularly common pattern. An older brother sometimes helped instead, as with
Schubert, Arriaga, and presumably Aspull, but this was also not very common.
Thus the family backgrounds were quite varied, and Mozart was one of the
few whose family background was ideal for nurturing a talented composer,
with a father who had long been a music teacher and violinist as well as an oc-
casional composer, and an elder sister who was already learning the keyboard
before Mozart himself.
These facts and figures throw some light on the relative importance of
environmental and genetic factors the so-called nature nurture debate, to
use Shakespeare s phrase in the development of the child composer. A child
composer clearly needs a suitable environment to be able to flourish. Many
children never had any opportunity to develop as composers, no matter what
their ability, because there were no instruments available, or their parents
could not read at all (let alone read music). Musically literate parents, however,
would be likely to notice any exceptional gifts in their offspring, and any early
inclination toward composition could be supported or at least tolerated. When
this happened, these gifts were developed, as in the cases identified, and this
helps explain why so many child composers had musicians for parents. Thus
the right environment was an essential prerequisite for a child to develop as
a composer. On the other hand, a suitable environment without exceptional
56 Chapter 5
innate gifts seems never to have produced a child composer. The ten Aspull
brothers must have shared quite similar environments, yet only one, the ninth,
showed early promise as a composer, and the same applies in nearly all other
cases of composers belonging to large or small families. Thus these inherited
gifts exhibited by child composers are not comparable to genetic inheritance of
blue eyes or fair hair, for they are far too rare within families for this to be the
case. If the ability and inclination to compose as a child had been the result of
some specific genetic quirk, there would have been a much higher proportion
of child composers whose parents or children were also child composers, but
Mozart and Scriabin are the only examples so far identified. If child composers
were, on the other hand, partly a product of parental pressure, there should be
a much higher proportion who were siblings, rather than just the Mendelssohns
and Boulangers (and in neither case is there evidence of significant parental
pressure; indeed the Boulangers composer-father died when the younger sis-
ter, Lili, was barely seven). The supposition must be that able child composers
are not produced just by nature in the form of ancestral genetic connections,
nor just by nurture in environments in which all siblings are encouraged by
keen parents to compose, but only by a fortunate and rare conjunction of a
group of innate individual characteristics and a suitable environment in which
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