to the gathering of scholarly musical literature of several classes. The collection of instruments at the Metropolitan Museum in New York is famous as one of the largest and best-arranged in the world; others of importance are at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at the National Museum in Washington.
In touching upon the status of composition in America it is
necessary to bear in mind one or two factors that have greatly
affected its development. One of these is the comparative
recency of interest in the more advanced forms of music.
Musical culture, like other culture, has always been propagated
from land to land, and has always had to pass through a sort
of acclimatization in each new country occupied. In spite of
the advancement of certain central cities, this is its stage in the
United States as a whole.
But there are other elements in the case. Among these is the extremely heterogeneous character of American population. In the pioneer days all the cultured inhabitants were immigrants, coming from diverse points of origin. In the middle period, before the War, homogeneity was being established, but upon different lines in different sections. As these sections have since been drawing together, a new flood of immigration has set in, so extensive and varied as to show that the complexity of races and mental aptitudes is to be far greater than ever before. Because of all this American music has never had a native or national basis like that found in practically all European countries. There is no unconscious folk-music that embodies the national temperament and life. Furthermore, American taste in music has been made extraordinarily eclectic, because all along subjected to the impact of all kinds of influences, some excellent, some inferior, coming from every principal European country. Hitherto, perhaps, this fact has told against the normal unfolding of a national style. As knowledge increases, however, it is possible that this very cosmopolitanism of experience may bring forth a better blending of existing styles into one expressive of the most modern feeling than could be reached in any other country. Yet against the hope of unification, it must be confessed, stands the fact of the enormous extent of the country, the great distances between the large cities, which are natural centres for music, the diverse interests of the different sections, and the consequent
