In view of the intense musical interest and eagerness of the American people, of the vigorous and very rapidly expanding development of musical life in the United States since the Civil War, and the enormous sums which the nation spends annually for musical education, both at home and abroad, it would be irrational to expect anything less than the results above indicated. Musical education, which has played so vast a part in this development, shares, nevertheless, the general chaotic condition of American musical life. The absence of a National Academy of Music leaves the country still without any official standard of musical education, although high ideals and thorough courses are maintained in the music departments of the larger universities. There are several independent musical academies and conservatories of high standing, with a sufficiently broad and well ordered curriculum, and an unnumbered mass of nondescript music schools innocent of all normal standards. The same scale, from the highest excellence to downright charlatanism, is to be found in the field of private instruction, and one of the greatest educational problems which the nation faces is to bring some element of standardization into this field. This is a matter for state action, and in several states a movement is well under way for the licensing of music teachers. The development of music in the public schools, well grounded in the early part of the last century, has of late years been pushed with vigor and intelligence, and has led to unprecedented studies in the adaptation of music to the child, as well as to the composition of a great quantity of new and appropriate children's songs of excellent quality. The chief difficulty with national musical progress through the public schools lies in the fact that such a minute proportion of public school scholars go to high school and college, most of them losing all contact with musical education before reaching an age when their interest in it can be firmly established. This circumstance is now happily being continually more widely met from extra-educational quarters, in the present movement for music for the people through various channels to be referred to later. Professional educators are inclined to lay too much stress on school education as a means of developing appreciation in the mass, forgetting that the time must come when the chief musical training of the people, with respect of their ultimate enjoyment of music, must consist in a general public hearing of music of the highest order.
In centres of highly refined musical culture, America, from East to West, is not lacking. An aristocracy of musical appreciation has followed upon the establishment of symphonic and chamber music organizations in a number of cities. This culture is, however, almost exclusively devoted to the maintenance of traditional European standards, and is inclined to take slight cognizance of the native and democratic developments in which the true national progress of the present lies. The presence of such a culture in America is therefore not altogether an unmixed blessing; in fact it may lead to certain results of positive evil. The presence of retrospective hyper-refinement in a nation at a time when rugged creative strength, even if crude in its artistic results, should be manifested, may be harmful in its effect upon normal creative progress, especially when, with the backing of wealth, the press, and the academy, it arrogates to itself the possession of the true vision of artistic standards.
If, then, the tide of musical appreciation in America has reached a normal level, in accordance with the general civilization of the world of to-day, if the appreciative era, purely as such, is past, the creative epoch has only fairly begun. America, in musical composition, already reckons a historical sequence approaching to a classical, a romantic and an ultra-modern period, exhibiting the strange spectacle of most of the founders of the first period living to see the flowering of the last, during their active lifetime. In fact, some of the pioneers have actively engaged in fostering the issues of all three epochs. The truth of this curious condition is that this triple-aspected development of the past fifty years can not in reality be said to represent even the beginning of the actual creative epoch of the nation. As the child is said to pass through phases corresponding to the entire ancient history of the race, so this chapter in American music represents the rapid passage of the youthful America through the previous history of the art; it has represented the desire to catch up with the world at large. Even if some works of lasting value have been produced, as is undoubtedly the case, this period has in actuality represented a mere reflex of European musical civilization, a surface agitation, to be followed by an authentic and original national productivity along the lines of its own needs and ideals.
So irregular and tumultuous have been the conditions of musical development in America, that early influences have been of relatively small qualitative importance in determining the ultimate issues of American music. There are but two such early influences of importance to record, and one of these has become wholly negligible with relation to our independent art of music, finding its only resultant effect in the church music of America. This, attributable in the first instance to the Netherland school of the Renaissance, appeared as the early English contrapuntal school of Purcell, becoming associated with the music of the Protestant Church in England, and finally becoming diluted to the productions of the school of Billings and Hopkinson in America. American hymnology undoubtedly owes its character to this evolutionary sequence, although in the end American church music has become inundated with the German influence in its more sentimental aspects, and presents in general a profound degeneration too momentous for discussion in the present brief review. The one great original influence acknowledged by the nation, in its musically creative life, is the mighty German tradition of the epoch of Beethoven. It is significant and fortuitous that America was colonized, musically, at the time when the influence of that tradition was paramount in the world. It was the emigrating German music teacher, in every city and town of the United States, who implanted the fundamental conception of musical art in American civilization. Accepted and consulted everywhere, he determined the character of music in America in the period of reconstruction and educational expansion after the Civil War. His influence was solidified by the character of symphonic and choral enterprise, and by that of the performances of German musical artists touring in America. The Italian was the accredited opera singer and nothing more; the German was the teacher.
In the subsequent course of developments, two matters have militated against the ultimate domination of the German influence in American composition. One is the extensive change which has since occurred in the racial nature of the population. Continued immigration from all lands has eventually produced a population too diverse to accept and perpetuate, as its dominant musical character, the tradition of any one nation, however musically great. The other is the amazing musical awakening of all Europe since the epoch of Beethoven, and especially since Wagner, and the consequent deluge of modern music from various nations which has poured in upon American musical life. In view of the infinity of newly revealed possibilities, the American composer has been unwilling to continue to reflect merely the one tradition with which his nation was formerly acquainted, in howsoever high honor that tradition was held. It is to be said, however, that the substantial character of German formal musical construction has exerted, as it should, a permanent influence upon the American attitude toward composition, and one which is certain to operate beneficially upon the creative musical life of the nation. The American point of departure has been one not so much of technical system and ideals generally, as of temperament.
A third matter qualifying this emancipation of American music is the unearthing of the mass of aboriginal folk music peculiar to America, particularly that of the Indian and the negro. This has had a far more significant and widespread influence upon composers in America than critics in general have been willing to admit, and many of the strongest works now appearing in this country acknowledge an influence from these sources.
The 'American folk-song' discussion arose after what has been termed the classical period of American music, of which J. K. Paine may be considered the founder, and during the period in which the romantic influence, culminating in the work of MacDowell, was beginning to yield to the influence of the ultra-moderns. The factors which broke the exclusive German domination in America were, on one hand, the following up on this side of the water of the musical individuality gained by other European nations, and, on the other hand, the movement for the development of aboriginal folk-song in America. To these causes, some may add a spontaneous climatic influence, but of this there has as yet been no material demonstration.
The gist of the folk-song discussion was the question as to whether the basis of a characteristic national American musical art was to be found in the music of the negroes or Indians. This discussion arose after Antonin Dvořák's proclamation of such a possibility during his sojourn in America in the years 1892-95, and rose to its height several years after the foundation in 1901, by the writer, of The Wa-Wan Press, a movement for the attainment of a greater freedom in American music along both modern European and American aboriginal lines. As in all such matters, the question was answered by the degree and quality of creativeness in the works brought forward in exemplification of the principle. Good works on Indian or negro themes have lived, and bad ones have died. It soon became plainly evident that there was no popular prejudice against music drawing upon the characteristics of these native aboriginal sources; on the contrary, much interest was evinced, as has frequently been shown by the attitude of audiences listening to such works and by the popularity which certain of them have attained. The subject has also been made one for special study by numerous musical clubs throughout the country. What was asked was merely that the result should be good music. The influence of Indian and negro music upon American composition has thus spontaneously come to be recognized as a national and acceptable one, and the reflection of it by American composers to-day arouses scarcely a murmur of comment. That only a certain proportion of composers in America would respond to these influences was soon perceived, and with the readiness of the people to accept this kind of work, it became merely a question of the proportion of American musical art which should exhibit these tendencies. There appears to be no diminution of the tendency of many composers to draw upon these apparently inexhaustible aboriginal sources, and with the constant advance of creative musical art in America, and with its eagerness to press to a conclusion every available phase of music susceptible of development, there is every reason to believe that this influence, now generally recognized, will lead to a very considerable mass of achievement of a high character. America is too diverse in its sympathies and ideals to acknowledge any one national or racial influence as paramount in its musical art, but absolute creative freedom is essential to its national character.
Upon the original German influence, which has been rapidly modified in America by the work of Wagner and Strauss, there has followed chiefly the influence of modern France. Many American composers have lent themselves with avidity to the assimilation of the new technical resources revealed by Debussy and his colleagues, with excellent results so long as they considered these merely as accretions to their previous resource, but in general with equal failure where they have thought to create in the spirit of the French idiom. The directness of Russian musical expression has made its appeal to American composers, though its influence upon the color of American music has been inconsiderable in comparison with the French. The one cumulative effect of the many influences, from within and without, which have qualified the nature of American music, especially during the last two decades, has been to wrench it free from the uninspiring and nationally inappropriate character which it had acquired as the result of its original exclusive early German influence, without, it is to be noted, leading it into imitative subservience to the particular character of the musical art of any other nation. In other words, America has gained its creative musical freedom, even if still too new to that condition to manifest its ultimate results. With this widened horizon, the true creative epoch of American music has only now begun. The handful of American composers of serious ideals and noteworthy ability who could be named a few years ago has increased to scores, and new names appear in such rapid succession that the fairly definite knowledge which America had of its chief composers of the 'classical' and 'romantic' epochs can give only the feeblest conception of the present condition of composition in America. The best of the newer work shows a loftiness of ideals, a breadth of outlook, a definiteness of purpose, a freshness of color, a sense of the beautiful and an esprit which argue strongly for the future honor of American music. The chief danger which threatens the American composer is the tendency to accept and conform to the standards of the centres of conventional and fashionable musical culture, especially in unsubstantial modern aspects, and to fail to study out the real nature and musical needs of the American people. Such a tendency naturally lingers with the lingering domination of Europe over the standards and the machinery of American musical life. Conformity means representation and a certain sort of acclaim for the composer; nonconformity means severance from the usual and conventional centres and institutions of musical culture. Critical approbation does not mean the response of the people; the composers most highly acclaimed by the critics can by no means be said to have come closest to touching the national heart. The attitude of the world of musical 'culture' in America is still cold toward the native producer; this narrow American 'culture' world pays for the maintenance of fashionable foreign standards, and resents any interference with this course. Concert singers are seldom heard in American songs worthy of their artistry, and orchestral conductors seldom give, on their own initiative, successful native orchestral works, an isolated performance of which has been arduously procured elsewhere.
With the people generally, however, the matter is quite otherwise. The people of the nation have never shown a disposition to receive otherwise than cordially the work of their own composers. From Stephen Foster, through the ranks of popular music composers, to MacDowell, to many song composers of the present, and latterly to the composers of music for popular festivals and pageants—wherever the composer has gone directly to the people and served their needs, whether in the sphere of lesser or greater ideals, he has found a ready welcome and a hearty response. The pathway of true creativity, of healthy growth and achievement for the composer in America to-day, lies in abandoning the competition with European sensationalists and ultra-modernists in the narrow arena of the concert halls of 'culture', and turning to the fulfilment of national needs in the broadest and deepest sense.