ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about a composer, scientist, inventor, philosopher and Rear-Admiral Jean Cras was a French musician. But this French musician was also Proper Breton. The Brest of Jean Cras' youth and adolescence, with its intricate social infrastructure reflecting the societal complexities of the Armorican province, foreshadowed the conflicting phenomena that governed his life. As Jean Cras' father was one of the region's leading physicians and bound by the Hippocratic Oath to serve mankind, his family knew no such social rigidity. The Cras family was not wealthy but comfortable; a pious Catholic family in which one strove to conduct one's life in accordance with one's faith. As Cras recounts in his autobiography, cultural life in Brest was limited. The depth of Cras' conviction that music is a sacred art bound inextricably to the highest philosophical, moral and ethical principles obviously stemmed from his religious training and is well reflected throughout his letters.
