Contemporary American Composers

The 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