Upon the original German influence, which has been rapidly modified in America by the work of Wagner and Strauss, there has followed chiefly the influence of modern France. Many American composers have lent themselves with avidity to the assimilation of the new technical resources revealed by Debussy and his colleagues, with excellent results so long as they considered these merely as accretions to their previous resource, but in general with equal failure where they have thought to create in the spirit of the French idiom. The directness of Russian musical expression has made its appeal to American composers, though its influence upon the color of American music has been inconsiderable in comparison with the French. The one cumulative effect of the many influences, from within and without, which have qualified the nature of American music, especially during the last two decades, has been to wrench it free from the uninspiring and nationally inappropriate character which it had acquired as the result of its original exclusive early German influence, without, it is to be noted, leading it into imitative subservience to the particular character of the musical art of any other nation. In other words, America has gained its creative musical freedom, even if still too new to that condition to manifest its ultimate results. With this widened horizon, the true creative epoch of American music has only now begun. The handful of American composers of serious ideals and noteworthy ability who could be named a few years ago has increased to scores, and new names appear in such rapid succession that the fairly definite knowledge which America had of its chief composers of the 'classical' and 'romantic' epochs can give only the feeblest conception of the present condition of composition in America. The best of the newer work shows a loftiness of ideals, a breadth of outlook, a definiteness of purpose, a freshness of color, a sense of the beautiful and an _esprit_ which argue strongly for the future honor of American music. The chief danger which threatens the American composer is the tendency to accept and conform to the standards of the centres of conventional and fashionable musical culture, especially in unsubstantial modern aspects, and to fail to study out the real nature and musical needs of the American people. Such a tendency naturally lingers with the lingering domination of Europe over the standards and the machinery of American musical life. Conformity means representation and a certain sort of acclaim for the composer; nonconformity means severance from the usual and conventional centres and institutions of musical culture. Critical approbation does not mean the response of the people; the composers most highly acclaimed by the critics can by no means be said to have come closest to touching the national heart. The attitude of the world of musical 'culture' in America is still cold toward the native