From such a background of reflex and impulse the facets of American musical nationalism grew. Let us distinguish three, though perhaps they are overdefined. One is the “folklorist” tendency characteristic of a group of composers of differing types, from Charles Wakefield Cadman to Charles Ives. Folklore in the United States is something different from European or Russian folklore. Here it does not involve a popular culture of ancient or legendary origin, which for centuries grew among the people and remained, as it were, anonymous; here it is something recent, less naive, and, let us say, highly specialized. It consists largely of popular songs originally bound to precise historical situations and the popularity of which, in fact, derived from their power to evoke the memory or vision of these situations--the Civil War, the life of the slaves in the South, or that of cowboys or lumberjacks in the now virtually extinct Old West--only nostalgia remained. Though these songs are in no sense lacking in character, they fail to embody a clear style; and it is difficult to see how, with their origins in a relatively sophisticated musical vocabulary, they could conceivably form the basis of a “national” style. Not only a musical, but also a sociological and psychological basis for such a style is missing. Therefore, apart from jazz--which is something else, but equally complex--folklorism in the United States has remained on a relatively superficial level, not so much for lack of attraction, but for lack of the elements necessary for expansion into a genuine style or at least into a “manner.” Certain composers such as Henry Gilbert, Douglas Moore, and William Grant Still have made use of folklorism with success. However, even in the music of these composers the element is evocative rather than organic; and the success of their efforts seems commensurable with the degree to which the whole remains on the frankly “popular” level. The extraordinary figure of Charles Ives might be considered an exception. He certainly is one of the significant men in American music, and at the same time one of the most complex and problematical. But among the various elements of which his music consists--music which sometimes reaches almost the level of genius, but which, at other times, is banal and amateurish--the folklorist is the most problematic, the least characteristic.