So irregular and tumultuous have been the conditions of musical development in America, that early influences have been of relatively small qualitative importance in determining the ultimate issues of American music. There are but two such early influences of importance to record, and one of these has become wholly negligible with relation to our independent art of music, finding its only resultant effect in the church music of America. This, attributable in the first instance to the Netherland school of the Renaissance, appeared as the early English contrapuntal school of Purcell, becoming associated with the music of the Protestant Church in England, and finally becoming diluted to the productions of the school of Billings and Hopkinson in America. American hymnology undoubtedly owes its character to this evolutionary sequence, although in the end American church music has become inundated with the German influence in its more sentimental aspects, and presents in general a profound degeneration too momentous for discussion in the present brief review. The one great original influence acknowledged by the nation, in its musically creative life, is the mighty German tradition of the epoch of Beethoven. It is significant and fortuitous that America was colonized, musically, at the time when the influence of that tradition was paramount in the world. It was the emigrating German music teacher, in every city and town of the United States, who implanted the fundamental conception of musical art in American civilization. Accepted and consulted everywhere, he determined the character of music in America in the period of reconstruction and educational expansion after the Civil War. His influence was solidified by the character of symphonic and choral enterprise, and by that of the performances of German musical artists touring in America. The Italian was the accredited opera singer and nothing more; the German was the teacher.