influences that finally made American music are chiefly German.
Almost all of our composers have studied in Germany, or from teachers
trained there; very few of them turning aside to Paris, and almost
none to Italy. The prominent teachers, too, that have come from
abroad have been trained in the German school, whatever their
nationality. The growth of a national school has been necessarily
slow, therefore, for its necessary and complete submission to German
influences.

It has been further delayed by the meagre native encouragement to
effort of the better sort. The populace has been largely
indifferent,--the inertia of all large bodies would explain that. A
national, a constructive, and collaborative criticism has been
conspicuously absent.

The leaders of orchestras have also offered an almost insurmountable
obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until
very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a noble
exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible
to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons under
Theodore Thomas, devoted, out of a total of 925 numbers, only
eighteen, or something less than two per cent., to native music. Yet
time shows a gradual improvement, and in 1899, out of twenty-seven
orchestral numbers performed, three were by Americans, which makes a
liberal tithe. The Boston Symphony has played the compositions of John
Knowles Paine alone more than eighteen times, and those of George W.
Chadwick the same number, while E.A. MacDowell and Arthur Foote each
appeared on the programs fourteen times. The Kaltenborn Orchestra has
made an active effort at the promulgation of our music, and especial
honor is due to Frank Van der Stucken, himself a composer of marked
abilities; he was among the first to give orchestral production to
American works, and he was, perhaps, the very first to introduce
American orchestral work abroad. Like his offices, in spirit and
effect, have been the invaluable services of our most eminent pianist,
Wm. H. Sherwood, who was for many years the only prominent performer
of American piano compositions.

Public singers also have been most unpatriotic in preferring endless
repetition of dry foreign arias to fresh compositions from home. The
little encore song, which generally appeared anonymously, was the
opening wedge for the American lyrist.

Upon the horizon of this gloom, however, there is a tremor of a
dawning