eminent septet of naturalized American composers, Charles Martin Loeffler, Ernest Bloch, Percy Grainger, Leopold Godowsky, Victor Herbert, Leo Ornstein, Carlos Salzedo.

Is that enough to challenge the superiority of Europe with her Tschaikowsky, Dvořák, Mussorgsky, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Mahler, Mackenzie, Vincent d'Indy, Ravel, Chausson, Elgar Schreker, Schönberg, Pizzetti, Malipiero, Rachmaninow, Nicolai, di Falla, Albeniz, Granados, Pedrell, Medtner, Stanford, Marx, Korngold, Lekeu, Ireland, Goossens, Glazounow, Martucci, Sgambati, Florent Schmitt, Puccini, Pfitzner, Milhaud, Busoni, Rabaud, Ropartz, Fauré, Pierné, Dukas, Charpentier, Nielsen, Sjögren, Casella, Sibelius, Bantock, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Zandonai, Montemezzi, Zemlinsky, Szymanowski, Braunfels, Bartók, Kodaly, Vaughan-Williams, Holst, Honegger, Turina, Scott, Delius, de Séverac, Koechlin, Mortelmans, Jongen, Rasse, Gilson, Holbrooke, Parry, Castelnuovo, Magnard, Hindemith, Pijper, Palmgren, Respighi, Weingartner, Du Bois, Duparc, Roussel, Suk, Fincke, Fibich, Smetana, Enesco, Bruckner, Gräner, Alfano, Bax, Bossi, Boughton, Chabrier, Karlówicz, Prokofieff, Recznicek, Reger, Rimsky-Korsakow, Scriabin, Sinding, Wellescz, and many more, of varying style, modernity, technique and talent? Indeed, if we adopt the method of Rupert Hughes in his book on American composers, and if our challenge include the American composers too promiscuously, then Europe in such a test of strength would have every reason for crushing us with her inexhaustible reserves of respectable composers of whom the very names would be unfamiliar to many of us.

Certain of our propagandists must have lost all sense of humor, if they expect our one hundred millions, on a less favorable esthetic soil, to produce as much good work as four times that number of Europeans on European soil. The actual truth is that we here in America do not know what is going on in the bee-hive of Europe's composers. We get an inkling of it, if we follow diligently the reports and reviews in our musical news magazines, but for the only test that actually counts, the aural test, our ears have to content themselves with comparatively few new European works by comparatively few composers. And, as is equally inevitable, a not always infallible personal preference by this or that conductor or singer, reduces the number of works performed for intrinsic merit and strictly esthetic reasons still further.

Yet, there are those extremists who desire even that modicum of acquaintance with modern Europe barred in favor of American works, because some American works happen to be better than

some European. Such a policy of exclusion would get us nowhere. Such a wall for the protection of the American composer, who really is no longer an infant, will not make him better than he is. It might indeed make him worse. Though all-American programs in my opinion have their value and place for special purposes, Edward MacDowell's aversion against all-American programs was based on a sound idea: not comparison between ourselves counts, but comparison with the rest of the musical world. Every self-respecting American composer worthy of the name, with whom I have discussed that problem, shares MacDowell's point of view. Any other would indicate a confession of weakness and cowardice. And worse, of stagnant ambition. The great majority of works composed in America is utterly dull as music; so is, of course, that in every other country, but unfortunately for us the sense of métier is nowhere so weak as in our country. Not that technique redeems dullness, but dullness plus crudity is hardly a standard by which a healthily ambitious American composer would wish to be judged. For works like Rubin Goldmark's "Requiem," Loeffler's "Pagan Poem," Bloch's "Viola Suite," Griffes' "Poem" for flute and orchestra, Powell's "Rhapsodie Nègre," Mason's "Russians," Gilbert's "Dance Place Congo," Carpenter's "Birthday of the Infanta," StillmanKelley's "Pilgrim's Progress" to tower above the dry-as-dust plains and scrubby foot-hills of American music, means little for our pride, but that they and other American works move on terms of artistic equality, even superiority, with some of the best European works we have been privileged to hear, assigns to them their true measure of significance. Give every American composer who has something of his own to say, provided he says it reasonably well, a chance to be heard, but do not waste the precious energy of patriotic propaganda on the boosting of mediocrity or The propaganda will spend itself ingloriously, if it turns its attention uncritically to pretty little prize songs or commonplace effusions in red, white and blue ink, and does not concentrate persistently on the very best we have to offer, in open international competition. That best we do not hear nearly often enough, but to blame principally foreign-born conductors for this chronic neglect of repetition, for this lack of permanency on the programs, diagnoses the seat of the trouble only in part.

worse.

This or that foreign-born conductor may harbor a purblind prejudice against American music good enough to satisfy his requirements for his organization, which he refuses to turn into a laboratory for the try-out of tyros, but emphatically that attitude

cannot be imputed to him as a class. The real trouble lies deeper than such trivial argument, if only those who shed tears of patriotic emotion over every composerling accidentally born in America, and who accept every phenomenon and institution of American civilization as a sort of eleventh Commandment, would see it. For the furtherance of the American composer in the larger and more difficult constructive forms, he could not possibly be cursed with an organization of musical life more faulty than ours. Not the overseas export of persons and music stands in his way, but the metropolitan export and transport within our own country from place to place. We do not possess enough local musical backbone; what there is best of musical backbone in our make-up is too ambulatory. However, this is a subject not germane enough to the present occasion for analysis and proof. A mere hint must suffice: instead of a dozen first-class and nearly first-class orchestras we should possess competent professional permanent orchestras under competent professional conductors in every city of 100,000 inhabitants or less. And similarly with chamber music organizations and with opera companies. The visits of the "star" organizations would retain the character of festive occasions, but the daily musical bread would be supplied from within. The problem of the American composer thus resolves itself into an economic problem of music rather than of an affirmative or negative state of mind. Solve that economic problem, and his problem, too, will have been solved. Until then his radius of action will remain stunted, and his opportunities for performance will not cease to be comparatively and discouragingly few. And worse than that, until then he will have to go a-begging for (insufficiently rehearsed) performances, with score in hand, from conductor to conductor, foreign or native, using pull and intrigue as levers. That is the rule, unless he happens to have composed a work of such outstanding merit that even now, under present adverse economic conditions, acceptance by this or that conductor becomes merely a matter of course.

While these defects in the organization of our musical life continue, no propaganda for the American composer will accomplish more than a slightly more frequent appearance of American works on our programs. That would be a welcome gain, but it

'The weakest representation is that of American piano music by both European and American pianists, but, then, pianists pay, as a rule, just as little attention to modern European piano music.—I hope that the time is not distant when every wellbalanced miscellaneous international program may properly contain at least one important American work, not as a result of propaganda pressure, but as the natural consequence of artistic supply and demand.

would not be a remedy. If the gain consisted in forcing mediocre American works into a crowded repertoire of masterworks, the gain would be one of quantity, not of quality, and therewith actually a loss. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether the fatal American tendency toward stereotyped, indistinct sameness, toward putting the national mind into a uniform, is not working havoc on the propaganda for the American composer, too. It would be the easiest and most charitable explanation of the singularly frequent absence of differentiation between what is conventional, feeble and unoriginal in our music and what is unconventional, powerful and original.

Precisely in that direction I have for some time sensed an alarming weakness of the propaganda. It preaches quality, but aims at quantity, and then attributes to the quantity a quality which the music does not possess. Under that delusion the fundamentally economic factor of the situation loses attention; the prime responsibility for the plight of truly representative American composers is shifted from general American conditions of civilization to individual persons. With the result that American composers of only moderate, indeed mediocre attainments, whose works radiate no significance whatsoever for America's musical progress, receive too frequently the gloriole of martyrdom. Therewith the circle completes itself. The virtues of discriminating modesty and discriminating pride both disappear before the vice of chauvinism. The propaganda becomes noisy, shallow and uncritical; a good American who composes is therefore supposed to be a good American composer and in John Tasker Howard's pungent phrase, the American composer has become, indeed, the victim of his friends.

This state of affairs is known as true to every conductor, foreign or native, but prudence forbids public utterance to that effect. Indeed, diplomacy may induce conductors or singers or instrumentalists to express opinions in public which differ essentially from those expressed privately. Well-informed critics often remain silent for the same reason, unless they prefer to speak the truth at the peril of being proclaimed traitors to the cause of the American composer. As for the American music publisher, he, too, knows the true state of affairs, but he will rarely voice his innermost opinions and then only with a cautious side-glance at his business.

The species of the American music publisher is rather variegated. Here I am concerned only with the publisher who takes an intelligent interest in music as such and gives cultural thought

to the problems of music and musical life in America. I do not speak of the mere utilitarian cretin for whom the click of the cashregister is the sweetest of all music, or whose musical taste does not rise far above so-called "popular" music and mushy parlor ballads, or whom the difference between "heart-songs" and "artsongs" puzzles like an Ephesian mystery, or who sees in every pretty American ditty an imperishable master-song and then ostentatiously preaches the gospel of the neglected American composer for the increase of his business in such wares.

If you desire to know the American music publishers who have done and are doing most for the American composer of music that possesses primarily an art-value, not a direct commercial value, therefore is expensive and not comparatively inexpensive to produce (if at the publisher's own expense), consequently is published as a contribution to the cause of American art rather than for commercial profit, it will pay you to study and compare their catalogues. That is the only fair test of the sincerity of their intelligent interest in and propaganda for the American composer, but even that test has its pitfalls.

The type of American music publisher whose opinions deserve respect differs from the banausic type just flagellated. However, whether an American music publisher belongs to the one or the other type, the American composer of music in the smaller forms has no legitimate grievance against him. The propaganda for the American composer misses its mark, if it charges the American music publisher with retaliation or wilful neglect in that respect.

Ever since the tender beginnings of the music publishing industry in our country in far-off Colonial days, the American composer has had little to fear from wilful neglect by the wicked publishers. Songs, piano pieces, anthems and the like were produced and published on American soil in ever-increasing quantities, and, whatever the demand of the public for such wares was in any given decade, the publisher acted as the beast of burden to carry the supply from the source of supply to the ultimate consumer.

From its infancy, the industry divided its attention between native products and reprinted foreign music, but not until about the middle of the nineteenth century did the music of our classics, the romantics and neo-romantics, which means for that period principally German music, assume substantial proportions. In the absence of international copyright protection before 1891, the industry could supply the rapidly growing American demand for acquaintance with the best available European music by reprinting it. Even after 1891, the American music publisher could with