Actually the nationalist current in our music dates back to a period considerably earlier than the twenties. Its underlying motives are as curiously varied as are its manifestations. Cultural nationalism has special aspects which, since they derive from our colonial past, may be considered as reflex actions, so to speak, of American history. American musical nationalism, too, is complex. In its earlier phases it developed gradually on the basis of a music culture which came to us from abroad. It consisted, as it were, of a deliberate search for particular picturesque elements derived for the most part from impressions received from ritual chants of the Indians or from characteristic songs of the colored people in the South; equally, it included efforts, such as MacDowell’s, to evoke impressions of the American landscape. These and similar elements strongly contributed to the renown of this sympathetic figure, and MacDowell’s name for many years was virtually identical with American music. A different feature was furnished by a Protestant culture which in the beginning came from England, but developed a character all of its own in the English colonies, especially in New England. Against this background grew our “classic” writers and thinkers, and the character found expression in music and painting, though in the latter it is admittedly less important. Next to MacDowell the most significant figure in the American music of that time was undoubtedly Horatio Parker, who, especially in certain religious works, displayed not only a mature technique, but also a musical nature and profile which were well defined, even though they were not wholly original. These men, however, did not represent a genuinely nationalist trend, but rather idioms which, in much more aggressive and consistent form, contributed to a nationalist current that was to become strong in the twenties. The figure and the influence of Paul Rosenfeld again comes to mind, yet the question was not so much that of an individual per se as that of a personality embodying a whole complex of reactions deriving from a new awareness of our national power, of the disillusionment of the post-War period, and of a recrudescent consciousness of Europe and European influence on the United States and the world in general.