The “great line of western tradition” provides the most fertile source of nourishment also for American music. This is now being recognized almost universally throughout the United States: and the recognition appears as the premise for our music education, criticism, and, in fact, for the responsible agencies of our entire music life. Today one hears very little of musical nationalism. It has been relegated to the provinces. The eternal quarrel between what is “esoteric” and what “popular” has evolved into a quite urbane, almost friendly argument between _diatonicism_ and _chromaticism_, the _tonalists_ and the _atonalists_, or with overtones resounding from a very recent past, between _neoclassicism_ and the _twelve-tone_ music. We are probably in a period of calm before new storms, and such periods are not always the happiest either for artists or for art. Those sensitive to shifting currents will have an idea of the nature of the next big argument. Before giving some hint as to the _possible nature_ of this argument, as a concluding gesture, it seems relevant to comment on two more points (unrelated though they are to one another) by no means unimportant in our general picture. First: though the study of the classics is all but universal in the United States, and is often on a level equal to anything found elsewhere, traditionalism in the European sense simply does not exist here, and we understand why this is so. In the absence of an indigenous tradition expressing itself in our criticism, our music education, and our practice of music, there is no group of composers which would or could identify itself with a conservative traditionalism, nor is there a means of opposition to new music on that level. Opposition is abundant, as has been indicated in the preceding pages; but, generally speaking, it is based on different grounds, and at most there are remnants of this or that European tradition: German, Italian French, Viennese, and sometimes even British. However, the word “tradition” here assumes the most dynamic of its senses: that which implies _continuity_ rather than that which fosters domination by the past.