, Mrs.
Jessie L. Gaynor, Constance Maud, Jenny Prince Black, Charlotte M.
Crane, and Helen Hood.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOREIGN COMPOSERS.

Ours is so young, and so cosmopolite, a country, that our art shows
the same brevity of lineage as our society. Immigration has played a
large part in the musical life of the United States, as it has in the
make-up of the population; and yet for all the multiplexity of his
ancestry, the American citizen has been assimilated into a distinctive
individuality that has all the traits of his different forbears, and
is yet not closely like any of them. So, American music, taking its
scale and most of its forms from the old country, is yet developing an
integrity that the future will make much of. As with the federation of
the States, so will one great music ascend polyphonically,--_e
pluribus unum_.

In compiling this directory of American composers, it has been
necessary to discuss the works only of the composers who were born in
this country. It is interesting to see how few of these names are
un-American, how few of them are Germanic (though so many of them have
studied in Germany). Comment has often been made upon the Teutonic
nature of the make-up of our orchestras. It is pleasant to find that a
very respectable list of composers can be made up without a
preponderance of German names.

The music life of our country, however, has been so strongly
influenced and enlivened and corrected by the presence of men who were
born abroad that some recognition of their importance should somewhere
be found. Many of them have become naturalized and have brought with
them so much enthusiasm for our institutions that they are actually
more American than many of the Americans; than those, particularly,
who, having had a little study abroad, have gone quite mad upon the
superstition of "atmosphere," and have brought home nothing but
foreign mannerisms and discontent.

Among the foreign born who have made their home in America, I must
mention with respect, and without attempting to suggest order of
precedence, the following names:

C.M. Loeffler, Bruno Oscar Klein, Leopold Godowski, Victor Herbert,
Walter Damrosch, Julius Eichberg, Dr. Hugh A. Clarke, Louis V. Saar,
Asgar Hamerik, Otto Singer, August Hyllested, Xavier Scharwenka,
Rafael Joseffy, Constantin von Sternberg, Adolph Koelling, August
Spanuth, Aime Lachaume, Max Vogrich, W.C. Seeboeck, Julian Edwards,
Robert Coverley, William Fu