. Later on, additions will be made, as
occasion may arise.

MODERN MASTERS AND AMERICAN COMPOSERS.

CHAPTER I.

NATIONALITY IN MUSIC

The outflow of musical production has become so wide during the last
fifty years, and so many composers have distinguished themselves in
every part of the world, that it is a matter of no small difficulty to
make a selection of names sufficiently representative to illustrate the
many-sided individualities of this movement. Dividing the entire list
into countries which have produced the composers, or in which they have
principally expressed themselves, we have at least four great European
provinces or musical centers, viz., Germany (including also
Austro-Hungary), Russia, France, and the Scandinavian countries,
including Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. To this list of characteristic
nationalities in music must be added our own, the American.

As soon as we pass beyond the short roll of the great masters in
instrumental music of the first class, we immediately come upon a large
circle of composers of such cleverness that they have just missed
becoming enrolled in the higher list, and perhaps some of them will,
later on, be included among the immortals. The operation of this slow
promotion is something like that of the French Academy, where, when one
member dies, a new one is elected to take his place. In this way, with
forty immortals constantly on duty, as one may say (although as a
matter of fact they are rarely elected to that honor until their
productive activity has practically ceased), the nation has a long roll
of distinguished and honored authors, composers, artists, and the like.

In all this music since Liszt there are curious resemblances and
equally curious differences. To speak first of the resemblances, it is
an interesting circumstance that by far the greater number of the
composers have been educated, at least in part, at the Conservatory of
Leipsic, which, ever since it was founded by Mendelssohn, has held a
wholly unique pre-eminence among the music schools of the world--a
pre-eminence which in many respects it has not deserved, especially
upon the technical side of musical instruction; and most emphatically
with reference to the pianoforte, where for at least ten years after
the death of Schumann nothing of Chopin, Schumann, or Liszt was
admitted or permitted to be taught to the students. Then a very
grudging reception was given to the works of Chopin