The name is absent



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



More intriguing information

1. The voluntary welfare associations in Germany: An overview
2. The Complexity Era in Economics
3. Fiscal Sustainability Across Government Tiers
4. Robust Econometrics
5. Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation
6. On s-additive robust representation of convex risk measures for unbounded financial positions in the presence of uncertainty about the market model
7. Computational Batik Motif Generation Innovation of Traditi onal Heritage by Fracta l Computation
8. he Effect of Phosphorylation on the Electron Capture Dissociation of Peptide Ions
9. The name is absent
10. The name is absent
11. Gender and aquaculture: sharing the benefits equitably
12. Electricity output in Spain: Economic analysis of the activity after liberalization
13. Education Responses to Climate Change and Quality: Two Parts of the Same Agenda?
14. EMU's Decentralized System of Fiscal Policy
15. The Effects of Attendance on Academic Performance: Panel Data Evidence for Introductory Microeconomics
16. Benefits of travel time savings for freight transportation : beyond the costs
17. Can a Robot Hear Music? Can a Robot Dance? Can a Robot Tell What it Knows or Intends to Do? Can it Feel Pride or Shame in Company?
18. On Dictatorship, Economic Development and Stability
19. Ability grouping in the secondary school: attitudes of teachers of practically based subjects
20. Implementation of a 3GPP LTE Turbo Decoder Accelerator on GPU