No country in the world makes such unreasonable demands upon the range of professional capacity as does America when begrudgingly bestowing her patronage upon her musicians. To be an "all-round" musician one is supposed to be a proficient organ and pianoforte player, a vocal teacher, a trainer of boy choirs, of solo quartets, of denominational church choir singing, and a choral as well as an orchestral conductor; one is supposed to be familiar with all matters pertaining to church services, to have some knowledge of orchestral stringed instruments, to be versed in subtleties theoretical and pedagogical, to have business executive ability, and to be--incidentally--a composer! It is therefore not easy to classify our contemporary musicians into distinctive branches of activity. John Knowles Paine, for example, is first and foremost the pioneer of America's great composers. On the other hand, were he to be deprived of this tribute, there would still remain divers possible classifications under the headings of organist, of pioneer educator, of theorist, lecturer, and teacher. Consequently, the following group must, like that of the French composers in Chapter XII, be accepted with considerable reserve; for, as in that chapter, the different composers are but arbitrarily classified under the particular branch in which they would appear to have excelled. It is also to be understood that where no statement to the contrary is made, the composer under discussion is a native born American. XII. (1) =Pioneers and Promoters.= Prominent among our indefatigable workers of the nineteenth century born prior to 1850 are: Lowell Mason, Bristow, Dr. William Mason, Gottschalk, C.C. Converse, Dr. L. Damrosch, Paine, B.J. Lang, Emery.