Contemporary Music 143
music. That this school will become notable in its final evo-
lution I have not the slightest doubt, and I am also con-
vinced that it will realize a national expression quite as
different from the music of Europeans as you yourselves
are different from them. Here again, for the nurture of the
most sensitive and imaginative of our young composers we
should consider national heritage in all its entirety. There
are always self-appointed promoters of nationalism in
plenty, who profess their creed with a vengeance, but rarely
do they agree as to the means to be employed. Among
these nationalists in music we can always distinguish two
distinct clans constantly waging their warfare of criticism.
Now criticism is easy, but art is difficult. Most of these
nationalists are painstaking enough in criticism, but few
of them are sufficiently so in self-examination. One group
believes that folk-lore is the only requisite to national music;
the other predicts the birth of national music in the indi-
vidual of to-day. Meanwhile, within the first clan itself dis-
sension goes on: “Folk-lore? But what in particular is our
folk-lore? Indian tunes? But are they American? . . .
Negro spirituals? Blues? But are these American?” and
so on, until nothing is left of national background. And
the field is at last wide open for those musicians whose
greatest fear is to find themselves confronted by mysterious
urges to break academic rules rather than belie individual
consciousness. Thereupon these musicians, good bourgeois
as they are, compose their music according to the classical
rules of the European epoch, while the folk-lorists, apostles
of popular airs, shout in their purism: “Can this be Amer-
ican music if inspired by Europe?” We are thus caught up
in a vicious and unproductive circle, unless we turn once
more to the past and consider how certain works, held to
be essentially national in character, were produced. Wagner