Another principal motive in our discussion is the conflict between the idea of music as an imported European commodity and the indigenous impulse toward musical expression. Obviously, in music criticism this conflict is clearly visible; for in the beginnings of our musical development we imported not only music but musical opinion as well. In the period before World War I, the task of American criticism was precisely that of imparting some knowledge of the music to which one listened in the concert halls and opera houses; to introduce the public to the criteria, controversies, and, above all, to the then current ideas relating to music; to inform it on composers and their backgrounds, musical or spiritual, and on the backgrounds from which music had sprung. The critics of that time were often men of genuine, and even deep culture, and with cosmopolitan experience; but their criticism was neither bold nor original. Like the composers of the period, American critics remained circumspect and cautious in their judgments of contemporary music. They did not wish to be considered unorthodox. How could they have done otherwise? They knew perfectly well that decisive judgments were not made in the United States, and that intellectual boldness would fall on deaf ears when few people were in a position to understand what they conceivably had to say. At most, they could allow themselves an occasional word of encouragement to the efforts of some American composer, who understood well that it amounted to no more than a friendly gesture. In the case of young composers, such gestures, almost always benign, were often coupled with an express warning not to take themselves too seriously. But even such judgments were not problematical, since there was virtually nothing in the American music which offered a challenge to accepted ideas. In the United States of 1913, the Fourth Symphony of Sibelius was regarded with suspicion; the _Valses Nobles et Sentimentales_ of Ravel were controversial; Strauss’s _Elektra_ seemed a shrewdly calculated shocker which the composer himself had repudiated in a much touted and likewise suspect _volte-face_ in _Der Rosenkavalier_. Stravinsky was but a name; and as for Schönberg, his First Quartet seemed quite obscure and the _Five Orchestral Pieces_ wholly incoherent.