These remarks seem relevant because certain basic characteristics of our intellectual life affect our attitudes toward a cultural movement such as the development of music here during the past forty years. These characteristics have strongly influenced, and continue to influence, the movement itself, and to some extent they still determine its character. It may therefore be worth while to consider briefly certain of these features, freely acknowledging that such summary reference does not give, nor could it give, a well-rounded picture; nor will it be necessarily relevant to, say, the situation in literature or in the graphic arts. American life, American society, and American culture are characterized by a fluidity which, up to this time, has always been a part of the nature of the United States, and not the product of a specific historical moment. It derives, in fact, from all that is most deeply rooted in our national consciousness; it is a premise with which each one of us is born, and which is carried into every thought and activity. It not only corresponds to all the realities of the life Americans live, but stems from all that is most intimate and most constant in their ideas. However oversimplified we may have come to regard the popular phrases which have always characterized the United States in our own eyes and in those of our friends--“land of promise,” “land of opportunity,” “land of unlimited possibilities”--the concept underlying them for the most conservative as well as for the most liberal retains the force of an ideal or even an obligation; a premise to which reference is made even at most unexpected moments and sometimes in bizarre contexts. The fluidity of our culture is both one of the basic assumptions behind these ideas and, in effect, a partial result of them. It is a result also of American geography and history--the vastness of the continent, the colorful experiences of the pioneers who tamed it, and the sense of space which we gain from the fact that it is relatively easy to move in either direction in the social scale. These are facts which every American can observe any day.