st of all, why cover it
(if covered it must be: if the trademark of nationality is
indispensable, which I deny)--why cover it with the badge of whilom
slavery rather than with the stern but at least manly and free
rudeness of the North American Indian? If what is called local tone
colour is necessary to music (which it most emphatically is not), why
not adopt some of the Hindoo _Ragas_ and modes--each one of which (and
the modes alone number over seventy-two) will give an individual tonal
character to the music written according to its rules? But the means
of 'creating' a national music to which I have alluded are childish.
No: before a people can find a musical writer to echo its genius it
must first possess men who truly represent it--that is to say, men
who, being part of the people, love the country for itself: men who
put into their music what the nation has put into its life; and in the
case of America it needs above all, both on the part of the public and
on the part of the writer, absolute freedom from the restraint that an
almost unlimited deference to European thought and prejudice has
imposed upon us. Masquerading in the so-called nationalism of Negro
clothes cut in Bohemia will not help us. What we must arrive at is the
youthful optimistic vitality and the undaunted tenacity of spirit that
characterizes the American man. This is what I hope to see echoed in
American music."

Of MacDowell as a pianist, Mr. Henry T. Finck, who had known him in
this capacity almost from the beginning of his career in America, has
written for me his impressions, and I shall quote them, rather than
any of my own; since I had comparatively few opportunities to hear him
display, at his best, the full measure of his ability:

"As he never felt quite sure," writes Mr. Finck, "that what he was
composing was worth while, so, in the matter of playing in public, he
was so self-distrustful that when he came on the stage and sat down on
the piano stool he hung his head and looked a good deal like a
school-boy detected in the act of doing something he ought not to do.

"Often though I was with him--sometimes a week at a time in
Peterboro--I never could persuade him to play for me. I once asked
Paderewski to play for me his new set of songs, and he promptly did
so. But MacDowell always was 'out of practice,' or had some other
excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense. I
am sorry now that I did not urge him with mo