Women constitute ninety per cent. of those who support music in this country. It is women who attend song and instrumental recitals; it is women who force reluctant husbands and fathers to subscribe for opera seats and symphony concerts; the National Federation of Musical Clubs, which works throughout the country to foster the appreciation of music, is composed entirely of women; at least two-thirds of the choral organizations in the United States contain women’s voices only. It is no disparagement of their activities to say that such a state of affairs is unhealthy. This well-nigh complete feminization of music is bad for it. After all, art, to be alive, must like any other living thing be the result of collaboration. Women have undertaken to be the moral guardians of the race, and no one can deny that they guard, upon the whole, as well as men could; but their guardianship is a bit too zealous at times, and their predominance in our musical life aggravates our already exaggerated tendency to demand that art be edifying. One of the conditions of the opera contest conducted by the National Federation in 1914 was that the libretto must contain nothing immoral or suggestive (I paraphrase). Now music is, after all, an adult occupation, and it might be assumed that a composer competent to write an opera score might have taste and intelligence enough not to be vulgar--for, surely, vulgarity was all they wanted to guard against. If the clause were to be interpreted literally, it would bar the librettos of _Tristan_, _Walküre_, _Carmen_, _Pelléas et Mélisande_, and _L’Amore dei Tre Re_--a supposition quite too unthinkable. The feminine influence helps to increase the insularity of our musicians. Women are more chauvinistic in art matters--if possible--than men, and among the women’s clubs that are trying to encourage the American composer there is a tendency to insist rather that he be American than that he be a composer. Since it is women who support our recitals and concerts it is they who must assume responsibility for our excessive cult of the performer. This land is certainly the happy hunting-ground of the virtuoso, be he singer, player, or conductor. What he chooses to sing, play, or conduct is comparatively unimportant to us. Our audiences seem to gather not so much to listen as to look; or if they do listen, it is to the voice or the instrument rather than to the music. The announcement, “Farrar in _Carmen_” will pack the Metropolitan to the doors; but if the bill be changed, and _Zaza_ be substituted at the last moment, who cares? Indeed the ticket agencies, knowing what people really attend opera for, frankly advertise “tickets for Farrar to-night.” Rachmaninoff is a great pianist, and Rachmaninoff playing an all-Chopin programme could fill Carnegie Hall at any time. But Rachmaninoff playing a programme of Czerny’s “Exercises for the Beginner” could fill it just as well. Announce an all-Chopin