When, a hundred years hence, some curious investigator searches through the available archives in an attempt to discover what was the state of American music at the beginning of the twentieth century, do you fancy that he will take the trouble to exhume and dig into the ponderous scores of Henry Hadley, Arthur Foote, Ernest Schelling, George W. Chadwick, Horatio W. Parker, and the rest of the crew who are regarded with respect by contemporary critics? Will he hesitate ten minutes to peruse the scores of Mona, the Four Seasons Symphony, or The Pipe of Desire? A plethora of books and papers will cause him to wonder why so much pother was made about Edward MacDowell, and he will even shake his head a trifle wearily over the saccharine delights of The Rosary and Narcissus. But if he be lucky enough to come upon copies of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, Alexander's Ragtime Band, or Hello Frisco, which are generally regarded with horror by the music critics of our day, his face will light up and he will feel an emotion akin
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The Great American Composer
