wth can scarcely be
measured. If we follow each nation through the past thousand years we
shall see that its art product has not only kept pace with its
development, but that in its art we may see all of its racial
characteristics, those habits of mind which are peculiarly its own. A
nation left to itself will develop a certain trend of thought which will
differentiate it from all other nations. A trend of thought which will
affect its art, literature, politics, religion, and in course of time
will produce marked physical characteristics. This is noticeable in all
nations which have lived long unto themselves.

But modern methods of communication are destroying this. As nations are
brought into closer contact with each other they begin to lose their
peculiarities. The truth of this statement may be seen in the fact that
in the past fifty years composers all over the world have been affected
by the modern German school of composition. Not one has escaped. While a
nation lived unto itself it could preserve its national life in its art,
but more and more the life of each nation is becoming a composite of the
life of all nations. The musical output of the world shows this
unmistakably.

What will be the music of the future? We know the music of yesterday and
today, but the music of the future can be foretold only by the prophet
whose vision is clear enough to see unmistakably what the trend of
civilization will be during the coming years. There are mighty forces
operating in the world today. If they succeed in bringing humanity to a
saner, more normal state of mind, to a clearer realization of what is
worth while and what is worthless, then all art will become purer and
more wholesome, more helpful and necessary, and music speaking a
language common to all will be supreme among the arts.

VI

SINGING AS AN ART

No artist can be graceful, imaginative, or original, unless he
be truthful.

Ruskin. _Modern Painters_.

"Art is a transfer of feeling" said Tolstoy. While this applies to art
in general it has a particular application to the art of singing. The
material of the singer's art is feeling. By means of the imagination he
evokes within himself feelings he has experienced and through the medium
of his voice he transfers these feelings to others. By his ability to
reconstruct moods, feelings and emotions within himself and express them
through his voice, the