ABSTRACT
There has always been a certain fascination with the topic of when musical development begins. When science, or to be more specific, musical psychology, began to take an interest in musical ability at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth century and first attempted to "measure" it with the further intention of trying to "predict" musical development, they concentrated on school-age children. After the discovery that a foetus begins to hear at about the 24th week of pregnancy, attention was directed to studying the effects of prenatal hearing on the development of musicality and the early reactions of newborn infants. The newborn are sensitive to sounds and musical stimuli; they demonstrate this with various gestures. Babies categorize musical sequences on the basis of global and relational properties, while the melody plays a critical role in perception.
