Suppose most American music is trivial and superficial? How many Americans would know the difference if it were profound? The composer here lives in an atmosphere that is, at the worst, good-natured contempt. Contempt, mind you, not for himself--that wouldn’t matter--but for his very art. In the minds of many of his compatriots it ranks only as an entertainment and a diversion, slightly above embroidery and unthinkably below baseball. At best, what he gets is unintelligent admiration, not as an artist, but as a freak. Blind Tom, the negro pianist, is still a remembered and admired figure in American musical history; and Blind Tom was an idiot. To an American, the process of musical composition is a mysterious and incomprehensible trick--like sword-swallowing or levitation--and as such he admires it; but he does not respect it. He cannot understand how any normal he-man can spend his life thinking up tunes and putting them down on paper. Tunes are pleasant things, of course, especially when they make your feet go or take you back to the days when you went straw-riding; but as for taking them seriously, and calling it work--man’s work--to think them up ... any one who thinks that can be dismissed as a crank. If the crank could make money, it might be different. The respect accorded to artists in our country is pretty sharply graded in accordance with their earning power. Novelists and playwrights come first, since literature and the stage are known to furnish a “good living.” Sculptors have a certain standing, on account of the rumoured prices paid for statues and public memorials, though scenario writers are beginning to rank higher. Painters are eyed with a certain suspicion, though there is always the comfortable belief that the painter probably pursues a prosperous career of advertising art on the side. But poets and composers are decidedly men not to be taken seriously. This system of evaluation is not quite as crass as it sounds. America has so long been the land of opportunity, we have so long gloried in her supremacy as the place to make a living, that we have an instinctive conviction that if a man is really doing a good job he must inevitably make money at it. Only, poetry and music have the bad luck to be arts wherein a man may be both great and successful and still be unable to look the landlord in the eye. Since such trades are so unprofitable, we argue, those who pursue them are presumably incompetent. The one class of composer whom the American does take seriously is the writer of musical comedy and popular songs, not only because he can make money, but because he provides honest, understandable entertainment for man and beast. That, perhaps, is why our light music is the best of its kind in the world.