even such celebrated men, in their day, as Raff, Rubinstein, Gade, and Mendelssohn, swiftly drop into oblivion, the composer of a good popular song is assured of immortality, as such things go. His song may be sung a century, indeed, after his name is forgotten. Sometimes, by a strange fatality, even his name may be remembered, along with his music. It must be apparent to any one that The Old Folks at Home, Dixie, My Old Kentucky Home, and Old Black Joe are better known and more admired today than the operas of Meyerbeer.
It is my opinion that the best contemporary American composers (I am still referring to Irving Berlin, Louis Hirsch, and others of their kind)[1] have brought a new quality into music, a spirit analogous to that to be found in the best
- ↑ These names seem almost classic now. Many new names should be added; among others, certainly that of George Gershwin, whose I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, obviously inspired by the manner of Negro spirituals, I must consider the most perfect piece of jazz yet written; Zez Confrey, with his diverting and ingenious Kitten on the Keys; Abel Baer, with his Mama Loves Papa; Walter Donaldson, with Carolina in the Morning. On November 1, 1923, at a concert in Æolian Hall, New York, Eva Gauthier sang a group of these songs. Their position on the program stood between a group by Bela Bartok and Paul Hindemuth and an air from Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. The group included Irving Berlin's masterpiece, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Jerome Kern's The Siren's Song, Walter Donaldson's Carolina in the Morning, and George Gershwin's I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Swanee, and Innocent In-
