So the American composer in America works more or less in a vacuum. He is out of things, and he knows it. If he attempts to say something, through his art, that will be intelligible to his countrymen, he is baffled by the realization that his countrymen don’t understand his language. This particular difficulty, this sense of inarticulateness, probably weighed less heavily upon the last two generations of American composers; for they were, most of them, virtually German composers. In their time a thorough technical education in music was so nearly unobtainable here that it was simpler to go abroad for it. So, from Paine to MacDowell, they went to Germany. There they learned their trade, and at least learned it thoroughly; but they learned to write, not only music, but German music. To them, German music was music. Their songs were _Lieder_; their symphonies and overtures were little sinister sons of Beethoven, Raff, and Brahms. So completely Teutonized did our musical speech become that we still find it hard to believe that French music, Spanish music, Russian music is anything but an imperfect translation from the German. A few went to Paris and learned to write with a French accent. MacDowell was, and remains, our best: a first-rank composer, who died before his work was done. His earlier music was all written, performed, and published in Germany, and it is as _echt Deutsch_ as that of Raff, his master. Not until he approached middle life did he evolve a musical idiom that was wholly of MacDowell, the American. Most of the rest came back to spend their days fashioning good, honest, square-toed _Kapellmeistermusik_ that had about as much genuine relation to their America as the Declaration of Independence has to ours. They might feel this lack of contact, but at least they had the consolation of knowing that there were people in the world to whom what they said was at least intelligible.