The third of the recurrent principal motives to be recalled here is the divergence between professional instruction and instruction designed for laymen. As has been pointed out, this divergence is found in no field other than music, and this author has tried to show that it is related to the idea that music--valid music, at least--is an imported article. He has tried to demonstrate, too, that it led, as far as music education is concerned, to a confusion of aims, creating problems for both teachers and gifted young men and women whose aims were serious. These problems still survive. A similar divergence is reflected in music criticism in a somewhat different form. It is evident that the principal task of the critic, certainly of the exacting critic, is that which has a bearing on the musical production of the time and place in which he lives. The music which comes from abroad or from the past calls for a serious attitude, to be sure, but it is not comparable to the critic’s responsibilities toward the culture of his own land and epoch. It does not inevitably imply a motive for attacking the real problems of either music or culture. Even research in regard to it is gratuitous to a point, for the very impulse toward research derives from a curiosity which, like the creative impulse, is a symptom of vitality or at least of restlessness in the general atmosphere of the time. It is an indication of an already highly developed music life. Generally speaking, music criticism in the United States remained amateurish for a long time; but if such a state of affairs adequately served conditions in the years before World War I, it was insufficient in the twenties, when young composers were beginning to take both themselves and their musical aims seriously. The influence of the critics was as powerful in those days as it remains to this day, up to a certain point; but the criteria which criticism furnished had little or nothing to give young composers. There was little understanding for either the needs or the demands of these young creators or for that which they wished to accomplish.