Sometimes musical talent will skip generations. Both Aaron Copland and George Gershwin have said that they didn't have musically talented parents.

I think there is a musical gene. I believe that a propensity for virtuosity in music in genetic. Mozart and other prodigies such as the recent teen-aged violin virtuoso from China are a case in point.

My interest in music was inherited from my mother. I don't know about my father although I was told he liked to sing. On my mother's side, ancestors from Jewish Eastern Europe had musical talent. There were singers, singing teachers and musicians there.

I have heard that the gene for this might be coming through the mother. But there is a
story that is related by Steven Pinker in "The Blank Slate" of the sperm banks that collects from Nobel Prize winners. One of the premier winners in science said that if they wanted sperm they should have gotten it from his parents because his children turned out to be guitar players. (No one has won a Nobel for that yet.)

Frank Hamilton