aristocracy, or, still less, a hierarchy.

There is a great opportunity for America to carry its political principles into this youngest of the arts. It is a gratifying sign that one of the most prominent theorists of the time, an American scholar, A. J. Goodrich, is adopting some such attitude toward music. He carries dogma to the minimum, and accepts success in the individual instance as sufficient authority for overstepping any general principle. He refers to a contemporary American composer for authority and example of some successful unconventionality with the same respect with which he would quote a European's disregard of convention. His pioneering is watched with interest abroad as well as here.

Worthy of mention along with Mr. Goodrich' original work is the effort of Homer A. Norris to instil French ideas of musical theory. As a counterweight to the German monopoly of our attention, his influence is to be cordially welcomed.

Now that Americanism is rife in the land, some of the glowing interest in things national might well be turned toward an art that has been too much and too long neglected among us.

The time has come to take American music seriously. The day for boasting is not yet here,—if indeed it ever comes; but the day of penitent humility is surely past.

A student of the times, Mr. E.S. Martin, shortly before the Spanish War, commented on the radical change that had come over the spirit of American self-regard. We were notorious in the earlier half of the century for boasting, not only of the virtues we indubitably had, but of qualities that existed solely in our own imagination. We sounded our barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. A century of almost unanimous European disapproval, particularly of our artistic estate, finally converted us from this attitude to one of deprecation almost abject. Having learned the habit of modesty, it has clung to us even now, when some of the foremost artists in the world are Americans.

Modesty, is, of course, one of the most beautiful of the virtues, but excess is possible and dangerous. As Shakespeare's Florio's Montaigne has it: "We may so seize on vertue, that if we embrace it with an over-greedy and violent desire, it may become vitious." In the case of the American composer it is certainly true that we "excessively demeane ourselves in a good action." If, then, the glory of our late successes in the field of battle shall bring about a recrudescence of our old vanity, it will at least have its compensations.

Meanwhile, the American artist, having long ago ceased to credit himself with all the virtues, has been for years earnestly working out his own salvation in that spirit of solemn determination which makes it proverbial for the American to get anything he sets his heart on. He has submitted himself to a devout study of the Old Masters and the New; he has made pilgrimage after pilgrimage to the ancient temples of art, and has brought home influences that cannot but work for good. The American painter has won more European acceptance than any of our other artists, though this is partly due to his persistence in knocking at the doors of the Paris salons, and gaining the universal prestige of admission there. There is, unfortunately, no such place to focus the attention of the world on a musician. Yet, through the success of American musical students among their rivals abroad; through the concerts they are giving more and more frequently in foreign countries; through the fact that a number of European music houses are publishing increasing quantities of American compositions, he is making his way to foreign esteem almost more rapidly than at home.

A prominent German critic, indeed, has recently put himself on record as accepting the founding of an American school of music as a fait accompli. And no student of the times, who will take the trouble to seek the sources of our art, and observe its actual vitality, need be ashamed of looking at the present state of music in America with a substantial pride and a greater hope for the future.

CHAPTER II.

THE INNOVATORS.

Edward Alexander MacDowell.

The matter of precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of E. A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would indicate him as the best of living music writers.

But this, to repeat, is not vital, the main thing being that MacDowell has a distinct and impressive individuality, and uses his profound scholarship in the pursuit of novelty that is not cheaply sensational, and is yet novelty. He has, for instance, theories as to the textures of sounds, and his chord-formations and progressions are quite his own.

His compositions are superb processions, in which each participant is got up with the utmost personal splendor. His generalship is great enough to preserve the unity and the progress of the pageant. With him no note in the melody is allowed to go neglected, ill-mounted on common chords in the bass, or cheap-garbed in trite triads. Each tone is made to suggest something of its multitudinous possibilities. Through any geometrical point, an infinite number of lines can be drawn. This is almost the case with any note of a melody. It is the recognition and the practice of this truth that gives the latter-day schools of music such a lusciousness and warmth of harmony. No one is a more earnest student of these effects than MacDowell.

He believes that it is necessary, at this late day, if you would have a chord "bite," to put a trace of acid in its sweetness. With this clue in mind, his unusual procedures become more explicable without losing their charm.

New York is rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Carreño, to whom he has dedicated his second concerto for the piano.

In 1876 he went to Paris and entered the Conservatoire, where he studied theory under Savard, and the piano under Marmontel. He went to Wiesbaden to study with Ehlert in 1879, and then to Frankfort, where Carl Heyman taught him piano and Joachim Raff composition. The influence of Raff is of the utmost importance in MacDowell's music, and I have been told that the great romancist made a protégé of him, and would lock him in a room for hours till he had worked out the most appalling musical problems. Through Raff's influence he became first piano teacher at the Darmstadt Conservatorium in 1881. The next year Raff introduced him to Liszt, who became so enthusiastic over his compositions that he got him the honor of playing his first piano suite before the formidable Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein, which accorded him a warm reception. The following years were spent in successful concert work, till 1884, when MacDowell settled down to teaching and composing in Wiesbaden. Four years later he came to Boston, writing, teaching, and giving occasional