In such a brief résumé of the forces characterizing our music life much is necessarily omitted, and oversimplification is inevitable. The emerging picture is gloomy in certain respects, but it can be counterbalanced by such considerations as were voiced at the beginning of our discussion. One sometimes hears the question: if things are really so, if there is an absence of genuine tradition and we have to consider the existence of economic forces pervading our music life in an almost mechanistic fashion, is it not chimerical to hope for the development of a genuine music culture in the United States? Part of the answer will be given later when, after consideration of the even gloomier situation of the musical theater in the United States, attention must be given to the various forces which are rapidly developing outside our organized music life and which constitute a real and perpetual challenge. One must insist once more on the fluidity of our culture, which is in constant development, or, as the German philosophers would say, in a constant state of “becoming.” It is interesting, at least to this author, to observe how in such a discussion one passes from a negative to a less pessimistic point of view, and one wonders why. The answer lies not only in faith in one’s own national culture, but in thousands of facts which crowd in, sometimes emanating from unexpected sources. These facts support that faith. They point to the genuine, the most vital need for musical experience in the United States, and drive toward it; they constantly seek and possibly discover fresh channels through which these experiences can be achieved. The development, in fact, is so rapid that any discussion such as the present may seem outdated even before the ink is dry. It should be remembered, finally, that economic forces, however mechanistic, are, in the last analysis, the projection of spiritual forces and eventually are subject to them. In this respect, as in most others relating to our musical development, the best antidote to pessimism is retrospection. IV All that has been said about the business organization of our concert life applies with at least equal force to our musical theater. The latter is the most costly as well as the most complicated form of musical production, and therefore the most problematical economically. However, the somewhat embarrassing situation of the musical theater in the United States is not only of economic origin. It may even be said that the economic difficulties are at least partly derived from other problems, so to speak anterior to economics.