It was at this time that he formed a close friendship with Percy Rector Stephens, the New York vocal instructor and then conductor of the Schumann Club. Stephens had confidence in the Taylor talent and lost no opportunity to promote the young man’s progress. The purpose of the Schumann Club, it will be recalled, was to deliver programs for women’s vocal ensemble that would follow as closely as possible the canons dictating the structure of artist recital programs. To achieve this laudable enterprise it was necessary to adapt the music and render translated texts of an entire library for the club. Mr. Taylor undertook the task with enthusiasm and the product of his labors was among his first essays in musical-literary effort to court serious critical attention. The prize contest for composers, of which we have so many now-a-days and which are so frequently condemned for their failures to produce a National school of outstanding creative genius, seems, nevertheless to find its associations in the biographies of the current class of American composers. It was through this means, by winning the first place in the National Federation of Music Clubs competition in 1913, with his orchestral composition _The Siren Song_, that Taylor attracted his first recognition as a serious writer in the larger forms. Within three years he had added to his output, in addition to numerous songs with piano accompaniment, _Two Studies in Rhythm_ for piano (Op. 5, Nos. 1 and 2); _The Chambered Nautilus_ (Op. 7), a cantata for mixed chorus and orchestra based on the poem of Oliver Wendell Holmes; _The Highwayman_ (Op. 8), a cantata for women’s voices and orchestra, to the poem of Alfred Noyes; and a song cycle, _The City of Joy_, to the poem by Charles Hanson Towne. In _The Highwayman_, written especially for the MacDowell Festival in Peterboro, N. H., in 1914, Taylor gave his first evidence of that trait that was subsequently accepted as one of his native characteristics, namely his ability to sense public taste. No student of his record can escape consideration of this conspicuous talent in his craft. _The Highwayman_ soon found its place among the most popular works in this form in our current music literature and the name and fame of Deems Taylor grew accordingly. He had raised himself immeasurably from the file of dilettante composers, and discriminating critics began to look to him for works of lasting importance.