National Portraits in Folk Music
There is one particularly lovely thing about folk songs and dances and
that is the natural labels which they bear, marking them as belonging to
France, Spain, Germany, Russia and so on. As with people, they all have
similarities and yet no two are the same in looks or in actions. It
would not take you long to know whether you were hearing a Spanish folk
dance, an Irish Jig, a Russian Hopak, a Norwegian Halling or an American
Foxtrot, because each has its own kind of rhythm and melody.
Some nations have gay, bright folk music, and others have sad, mournful
music. In northern countries where living is hard on account of the
long, dark, cold winters, and the people are forced to spend much time
indoors and away from neighbors, where money and food are scarce, they
are likely to be sad and lonely. In the centuries gone by they made up
songs that pictured their lives and their surroundings. On the other
hand, in countries where the sun shines most of the time, where people
live out of doors, are happy, and have many friends and much fun, the
music is gayer and usually lighter. This is why the music of Finland,
Sweden, Norway and northern Russia is so much in the minor key, and
seems grey, and why the music of Italy Spain, France and other southern
countries is in the major key and seems rosier in color and happier in
mood. Other reasons, too, for sad folk music is oppression, harsh rulers
and harsh laws. So the Finns and Russians, the American negroes and the
Hebrew tribes sang sad songs.
[Illustration:
_“The Music Making Boys,” by Frans Hals, from the Kassel Gallery,
Germany._
_Boys with a Lute._
]
[Illustration:
_After a painting by Teniers, in the gallery at Munich._
_A Peasant Wedding._
]
RUSSIAN FOLK MUSIC
Again you see history in the songs, particularly in the Russian folk
music, which shows us in musical portraits, the tragedy of their lives
under cruel czars and serfdom. They sang in ancient scales which make
the music all the more mournful to our ears.
The rhythms in these songs are different from those of romance languages
or those derived from Latin, for the Russians have a language of Slavic
birth. The Russians have some Oriental blood from the Tartars who
invaded Russia and who were descended from Tartar, a Mogul or Mongol
from Asia. When you hear Russian songs that sound Oriental, you will
agree with Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer, that the Russian, deep
down below the skin is an Oriental even though he has been living in
Europe for many centuries.
In Russia, from the Baltic Sea on the north to the Caucasus Mountains on
the south, from the sunny slopes of the Ural Mountains on the west, to
the bleak desert wastes of Kirghiz on the east, these mixed races have a
common tie in their love for folk story and folk music.
Marvelous tales have been handed down by word of mouth about the river
gods and the wood-sprites, about the animals who talked like men, and
the ugly old witch, Baba-Yaga, whose name alone was enough to quiet the
naughtiest child! Through these folk tales you can follow the Russians
from the time they were primitive men and pagans through all their
battles and the invasions of barbarous tribes, to the time when they
became Christians and had to struggle against the Tartars, the Turks and
the Poles. All these happenings were put into songs and are the epic, or
tale-telling folk music of the Russians.
But one of the most interesting things, we think, in all the growing of
music into maturity, is that Russia never had anything but folk music
until the 19th century! Music always belonged to the people, and there
were no musical scholars making it the possession of the educated
classes only.
Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russians took the folk song from
its humble surroundings and used it in their compositions, for they
realized its beauty and its richness.
The Russians have instruments brought down from very early times, which
are found today in no other country. Perhaps you may have heard a
Russian _balalaika_ orchestra. The _balalaika_ is a stringed instrument,
with a triangular body and long neck, having three or sometimes four
strings, which are plucked and sound something like a guitar. It dates
back to the end of the 13th century. They also have an instrument like a
mandolin, with three strings, that dates from the 13th century also. It
came from Asia at the time of the Mongolian invasion.
Another instrument, a descendant of the Greek _psalterion_ and known to
have been in Russia since the 9th century, is the _gusslee_. It is
something like a zither, and is composed of a hollow box, strung with
any number from seven to thirteen up to twenty-four strings. It is held
on the lap, and the strings are plucked with the fingers.
There is also a sort of lute or _bandoura_ with many strings, dating
from the 16th century, played principally by the blind who belong to
groups of minstrels. There is also a wooden clarinet, on which one scale
can be played. Its special purpose was for use at funerals, and its
name, which comes from a word meaning tomb, is _jaleika_.
FINNISH SONGS
The Finns, a northern people, although often dominated either by Sweden
or Russia, have their own songs and peculiar rhythms. The _Kalevala_ is
their great epic poem, like the _Iliad_ of Greece, _Beowulf_ of the
Anglo-Saxons, and the _Eddas_ of Iceland. From this narrative poem or
epic, have come many a folk-tune. Besides, they sing of their beautiful
country, often called the country of lakes.
The typical rhythm of Finland is the ⁵⁄₄ time which sounds most
attractive. They have the _kantele_, a plucked string instrument, and
they glory in their folk music which they use as an everyday joy and do
not “turn it on” only for “hey-days and holidays.”
POLAND’S MUSIC
The Polish people have loved music as the Russians love it, and although
Poland has been reconquered, divided and redivided among the surrounding
kingdoms of Europe, it has always kept its own music. So we have another
set of Slav songs but with certain rhythmical differences, not found in
the music of other nations. (Chapter IX.)
There is an Oriental strain in this music, too, and it must be very
ancient indeed, for Oriental tribes have not lived in this country for
ages.
In addition to an instrument like the Russian _gusslee_, and a violin
like the Arabian _rebab_, the Polish have a clarinet made of wood,
called by its old name of _chalumeau_, the lute, and an instrument
called the _kobza_, belonging to the bagpipe family. This is of great
age, but is still in use among the mountaineers of Carpathia, and is
made of goat skin with three pipe attachments. The _kobza_ can replace
an entire orchestra!
GYPSIES
Gypsies! The name fires our imagination and brings up pictures of
dark-skinned, black-eyed people with glossy black hair, dressed in gay
colored shawls, with bright kerchiefs wound around their heads. We think
of them as being on “one grand picnic,” living out of doors, cooking
their meals over bonfires in the open, sleeping in their covered wagons
or tents, or under the stars, always gay, care-free and dirty! Then,
think of the Gypsy music,—the dances, the songs, and the wonderful
violin playing! So wild, so weird, so out-of-doors is it, that we are
thrilled by the very thought of it.
Where did these folk come from? Who are they? What are they? They have
spread over most of Europe, and are found in Hungary, Bohemia, Roumania,
Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Turkey, and even America. They
are a race and they have a language of their own. Theirs is a mixture of
the ancient _Prakrit_ or Indian, with the different languages with which
they have come in contact in the course of many centuries. Men who make
a study of the history of languages say, that in their idioms, they show
traces of roving for many centuries in Asiatic countries, before
reaching Europe in or before the 15th century. They are often called
“Bohemians” because Bohemia (Czecho-Slovakia) seems to have been their
main European camping-ground. It is generally agreed that they came from
India and that they are Asiatic, but they got their name _Gypsy_, a
contraction of the word Egyptian, because people at first thought that
they came from Egypt.
The Gypsies have an extraordinary gift for music. They do not study it
as an art, as we do, and cannot even read musical notes, but they
imitate and memorize, and reach a high degree of skill in playing,
particularly the violin. They have such great power of imitation, that
they rapidly learn to play the instruments, and accustom themselves to
the folk music they find wherever they wander. However, they always keep
something of their own sadness and wildness. In Spain, they accompany
themselves on the guitar, and mark the rhythm with castanets, as do the
Spaniards themselves, borrowing the Spanish folk songs which they sing
in their own way. In Russia, England, Turkey and everywhere they do the
same with the folk music of those countries.
The special traits, then, of the music of the Gypsies, are found rather
in the way they play, interpret and express the music of others, than as
composers of their own music. Yet they use strongly marked rhythms,
florid ornamentation, and scales that are Oriental, which show us from
where they came. Here is one of their most used scales:
[Illustration: Scales]
There are many kinds of scales among the Gypsies,—a mixture of the
Oriental scale with the pentatonic, and with the European major and
minor.
The Hungarian Gypsy has made more music than any other branch of the
Gypsy people. In fact, when we hear music that makes us exclaim, “Oh,
that is real Gypsy music!” it is almost always Hungarian. At least one
quarter of the inhabitants of Hungary, a name which comes from the
barbarian tribe of Huns, are Magyars, descendants of Tartars and
Mongolians of Asia, who settled in the land of the Huns in the 9th
century. In the national music of Hungary, we find it hard to tell just
what is Magyar, and what is Gypsy, because the two have intermingled for
so long.
The important thing is that this Magyar-Gypsy folk music has been the
inspiration of hundreds of trained composers, like Haydn (see the Gypsy
Rondo from his piano trio, also arranged for piano alone), Franz Liszt
who wrote many famous Hungarian Rhapsodies, Hector Berlioz who made the
Hungarian Rakoczy March famous, Johannes Brahms who used many folk songs
in his compositions and wrote a set of Hungarian Dances. Even Bach,
perhaps the greatest of all composers, seems to have been influenced by
the Gypsy music as played on the Hungarian _cembalo_.
No Hungarian Gypsy orchestra is complete without a cembalo, which looks
something like an old-fashioned square piano with the top off. This is
strung with metal strings covering a range of four octaves, and is
played with two small limber hammers. The cembalo players perform with
great rapidity and agility; they are able to play scales, arpeggios,
trills, and the tricks of Gypsy music with great skill and ease. It is
not known just when this instrument came into use, but it is a
descendant of the _dulcimer_ and _psaltery_, instruments we hear of in
the Bible, and in Arabia and Persia, probably brought into Europe during
the Crusades.
The _czardas_ (pronounced chardas) is an old Hungarian dance in which
are all the national characteristics of this folk music, well marked in
syncopated rhythms (rhythms out of focus, page 144, Chapter X), strong
accents, many ornaments. The Gypsies dance the czardas every time they
get a chance, for they love it. It has two contrasting parts, one is
called _lassan_ which is very slow and sad, and the other called
_friska_ which is very fast and fiery.
Panna Czinka, a Gypsy Queen, who lived in the 18th century was the
daughter of the chief of a band of Gypsies and she inherited his title
when she was very young. She married a ’cellist of her tribe and went
all through Hungary, Poland and Roumania playing on a wonderful Amati
violin, in a very wonderful way. She brought the _Rakoczy March_ to the
people, although it is not known whether or not she composed it. She
always wore men’s clothes of most picturesque type and when she died she
requested to have her beloved violin buried with her! Long after her
death she was still an inspiration to young Gypsy fiddlers, who all
longed to play as beautifully as Panna Czinka.
BOHEMIAN FOLK SONG
Bohemia is rich in folk dances, most of which are named for places where
they originated or the occasions for which they were used, or from songs
by which they are accompanied.
The Bohemians have a bagpipe called the _Dudelsack_ and the player is
called a _Dudelsackpfeiffer_!
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE FOLK MUSIC
To the outsider, there is a national color, rhythm, and charm in Spanish
music that is unmistakable. We recognize it immediately as Spanish, but
the Spaniard will be able to tell you the province from which it came,
for there is as much difference between a Castilian song and a Basque,
as we find between the speech of a Virginian and a Vermontian! (Chapter
IX.)
Portugal, although Spain’s next door neighbor, has quite a different
music; it is peaceful, tranquil and thoughtful, but doesn’t thrill you
as does the Spanish music. The Portuguese are calmer and less excitable
than the Spaniards, so here again you see the character and qualities of
people coming out in the music or what we like to call the musical
portrait of a nation. There are no exaggerated rhythms but instead a
steady melancholy flow of melody.
FRENCH FOLK MUSIC
The portrait of France that we get from her folk music is much like the
one we find in songs of her troubadours and trouvères. In southern
France, the folk songs are gay and filled with poetic sentiment and
religious feeling; from Burgundy come some of her loveliest Noëls
(Christmas songs) and also the drinking songs. From Normandy, come songs
of ordinary everyday doings; their mill songs, when sung out in the open
on a summer night by the peasants are very beautiful and often show
strong religious feeling. Brittany whose inhabitants were originally
Celts have a music not unlike the Welsh, Scotch and Irish. Long ago, the
famous French writer and musician of the 18th century, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, said of it, “The airs are not snappy, they have, I know not
what of an antique and sweet mood which touches the heart. They are
simple, naïve and often sad—at any rate they are pleasing.”
GERMAN FOLK MUSIC
The _Volkslieder_ or folk songs of the Germans are the backbone of the
great classical and romantic periods of the 18th and 19th centuries
which made Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, Wagner and Brahms the
music masters of the world.
As early as the 14th century collections of these songs had been made,
the subjects of which were mostly historical. By the 16th century music
had grown so much that every sentiment of the human heart and every
occupation of life had its own song: students, soldiers, pedlars,
apprentices all had their songs. These are folk songs of Class A,
because their composers forgot to leave their names and no musical
archæologist has been able to dig them up. (Page 108. Chapter IX.)
These songs became melodies independent of the accompaniment. They also
put the major scale on a firm basis which took the place of the church
modes. Their spirit and power were felt in every branch of music, and
they supplied melodies for the chorales or hymns, for the lute players
and organists in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.
Every town had its own band called the _Stadt Pfeifferei_ (town pipers).
The peasant boys played the fiddle, and the shepherds the _schalmey_, (a
kind of oboe). Every festivity was accompanied by song and dance.
IRISH FOLK SONGS
No people in the world have more fancy and imagination, a keener sense
of humor, are more fun-loving and more superstitious than the Irish. All
these qualities come out in their vast treasure of folk music, which is
considered the most beautiful and the most varied of all the music that
has come from peasant folk. The subjects cover practically every phase
of life from the castle to the cot, and songs of every heading we have
included in the last chapter. There are reels, jigs, marches,
spinning-tunes, nurse-tunes, planxties (Irish or Welsh melodies for the
harp in the nature of a lament), plough-songs and whistles. The Irish
folk songs are rich historically as well as beautiful musically.
The form of the Irish folk music is perfect, and is a model of what
simple song form has been for several centuries. In fact, all large
forms have been built on just such principles of balance and contrast as
are found in an Irish folk song called _The Flight of the Earls_.
SCOTCH AND WELSH TUNES
The Scotch and Welsh also have a very rich store of folk song and
ballads. Along with the Irish they are children of the early Celts and
have brought down to us the music of early times. In all this music we
find the pentatonic scale, and a rhythm of this character ♩♩ ♩♩ a dotted
note followed by a note of shorter value, which gives a real lilt to
Irish, Welsh and Scotch music. We told you about the Welsh bards and
their queer violin without a neck, called a _crwth_, and their little
harp that was handed around their banquet tables from guest to guest.
The Gaelic music, or that of the Scotch Highlands, dates back to
prehistoric times. You have seen a Scotch Highlander in his plaid and
kilties playing on his bagpipe, and it has a special kind of scale (two
pentatonic scales put together) like this:
G A B D E G
A B C♯ E F♯ A
and a drone bass (one tone that does not change and is played all
through the piece) which makes it hard to get the same effect on the
piano. Scotch bagpipes are heard in districts where the milk-maids and
serving folk get together in the “ingle,” and still “lilt” in the good
old-fashioned way.
The thing that makes us know Scotch music from any other is a queer
little trick of the rhythm called the _snap_ in which a note of short
value is followed by a dotted note of longer value, instead of the other
way around which is more commonly found. Thus: ♩♩ ♩♩ but the two ways
are always combined, thus: ♩♩ ♩♩|♩♩ ♩♩ ♩♩|♩♩ and so on. If you want to
make up a real Scotch tune yourself, just play this rhythm up and down
the black keys of the piano from F# to the next F#!
Many of the lovely poems of Robert Burns have been set to old Scotch
airs. He saved many of the old songs, for he gathered the remains of
unpublished old ballads and songs, and snatches of popular melodies, and
with genius gave life to the fragments he found. In his own words, “I
have collected, begged, borrowed and stolen all the songs I could meet
with.”
CANADIAN FOLK SONGS
Canada has the folk songs of the _habitant_ which are French in
character. They are very beautiful and full of romance and many of them
can be traced back to France. Many, however, were born in Canada and
reveal the hearts of people who lived in the great lonely spaces of a
new country.
ENGLISH FOLK SONGS
Most of the English folk songs are very practical accounts of the doings
of the people. The English seemed more interested in human beings than
in Nature, like the Scotch and Irish, or in romantic love songs like the
Latin races in Spain, France and Italy. The English had to be practical
for they were always leaders and at the head of things, while the Scots
and Irish were further away from the center and rush of life and so went
to Nature for their subjects.
There are about five thousand English folk songs which sing of the
English milk-maid and her work, the carpenter, the hunter and his
hounds, and hunting calls. They have the Morris Dance tunes, the May-day
songs, the sailor’s chanties, they even sing of criminals famous in
history and always very definitely tell the full name and whereabouts of
a character in a song. They also have songs of poachers (those who hunt
on land forbidden them), of murderers and hangmen as well as shepherds
and sailors. But England’s finest songs are the Christmas carols which
sing of the birth of Jesus. So, if they sang little of Nature they did
sing of man and God and have given us much that is beautiful and worth
while.
OLD ENGLISH CAROL
FROM THE TIME OF HENRY IV, OR EARLIER
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere fode,
How xalt thou sufferin be nayled on the rode.
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere smerte,
How xalt thou sufferin the sharp spere to Thi herte?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, I synge all for Thi sake,
Many on is the scharpe schour to This body is schape.
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, fayre happis the befalle,
How xalt thou sufferin to drynke ezyl and galle?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, I synge al beforn,
How xalt thou sufferin the scharp garlong of thorn?
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, gwy wepy Thou so sore,
Thou art bothin God and man, gwat woldyst Thou be more?
So blyssid be the tyme!
(From the Sloane MSS. Quoted from _The Study of Folk Songs_, by Countess
Martinengo-Cesaresco).
AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC
We come now to a question that has been the subject of many arguments
and debates. Many claim that we have no folk music in the United States,
and others claim that we have. It would take a whole volume to present
both sides and we must reduce it to a sugar-coated capsule.
Although we know that Stephen Foster wrote _Old Folks at Home_, _The Old
Kentucky Home_, _Uncle Ned_, _Massa’s in the Cold_, _Cold Ground_, and
_Old Black Joe_, they express so perfectly the mood and spirit of the
people that they are true folk songs. Harold Vincent Milligan in his
book on Stephen Foster says: “Every folk-song is first born in the heart
and brain of some one person, whose spirit is so finely attuned to the
voice of that inward struggle which is the history of the soul of man,
that when he seeks for his own self-expression he at the same time gives
a voice to that vast ‘mute multitude who die and give no sign.’”
And again speaking of Stephen Foster, Mr. Milligan says: “Although
purists may question their right to the title ‘folk songs’ his melodies
are truly the songs of the American people.”
The folk music of which we have told you has been the music portraits of
different peoples such as the Russian, the Polish, the French, the
German, the English, the Irish and so on. If there has been a mixture of
peoples or tribes as in England where there were Britons, Danes, Angles,
Saxons and Normans, it happened so long ago that they have become molded
into one race. We are all Americans but we are not of one race, and we
are still in the process of being molded into one type.
We unite people of all nations under one flag and one government, but we
have been sung to sleep and amused as children by the folk songs of the
European nations to which our parents and grandparents belonged! And so
we have heard from childhood _Sur le Pont d’Avignon_, _Schlaf Kindlein
Schlaf_, _Wurmland_, _The Volga Boat Song_, _Sally in our Alley_, or
_The Wearing of the Green_, none of which is American.
In spite of all these obstacles to the growth of a folk music in
America, we have several sources from which they have come.
As our earliest settlers in Virginia and New England were English, they
brought with them many of their folk songs and some of these have
remained unchanged in the districts where people of other nations have
not penetrated. _The Lonesome Tunes_ of the Kentucky mountains, also of
Tennessee, the Carolinas and Vermont are examples of this kind of
English folk song in America.
In Louisiana which was settled by the French, we find a type of folk
song that is very charming. It is a combination of old French folk song
with negro spiritual, and is brought to us by the Creoles.
In California there is a strong Spanish flavor in some of the old
ballads that date from the time of the Spanish Missions. There are also
mining songs of the “days of ’49,” including _Oh Susannah_, by Stephen
Foster, and we defy you to get rid of the tune if once it “gets you!”
Then there are cow-boy songs of the Plains, _The Texas Rangers_, _The
Ship that Never Returned_, _The Cow-boy’s Lament_ and _Bury Me Not on
the Lone Prairie_; the Lumberjack songs of Maine; the well known air of
the _Arkansas Traveller_, which was a funny little sketch for theatre of
a conversation between the Arkansas traveller and a squatter which is
interrupted by snatches of a tune; and in addition a whole book full of
songs sung in the backwoods settlements, hunting cabins and lumber camps
in northern Pennsylvania.
So if you seek, you can find a large number of folk songs without going
to the Indian or the Negro.
The Civil War brought out a number of new national songs among them
_Glory Hallelujah_ and _Dixie_. _Dixie_ was written in 1859 as a song
and “walk-around” by the famous minstrel Dan Emmett, and became a war
song by accident. It had dash and a care-free spirit, and the rollicking
way it pictured plantation life attracted the soldiers of the South when
they were in the cold winter camps in the North. Its rhythm is so
irresistible that it makes your hands and feet go in spite of yourself.
Besides these two the soldiers of the Civil War marched to _Rally Round
the Flag, Boys_, _Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching_, _Home,
Sweet Home_, _Lily Dale_, _The Girl I Left Behind Me_, _Hail Columbia_
and _The Star Spangled Banner_.
We have told you so much about the Indian and his song that it is
unnecessary now to dwell at length on his music. Of course some American
composers have used Indian folk legend and music, but after all it
remains the musical portrait of the Red Man and has not become the heart
language of the white man.
We have, however, a real folk-expression that has had a great deal of
influence on our popular music and will probably help to create a
serious music to which we can attach the label “Made in America,” and
that is the music of the American Negro.
In Chapter II we showed you what the Negro had brought from his native
Africa, and also that he had been influenced by his contact with the
white race. His music is not the result of conscious art and of study
but is a natural outburst in which he expresses his joys and sorrows,
his tragedies and racial oppression. Also we find rhythms, melody and
form that have grown as a wild flower grows, and are different from any
we have met heretofore.
Mr. Krehbiel in his book _Afro-American Folksongs_ says of the Negro
slave songs: “They contain idioms which were transplanted hither from
Africa, but as song they are the product of American institutions; of
the social, political and geographical environment within which their
creators were placed in America, of the influences to which they were
subjected in America, of the joys, sorrows and experiences which fell to
their lot in America.”
The Negro has cultivated, like all races, songs and dances. As we said
of the Russian, his song is sad and full of tragedy, but the dance is
gay, wild and primitive. From the dance of the Negro we borrowed the
rhythm formerly called ragtime, which is now jazz. The principle of the
Negro rhythm is syncopation, that is, the accent is shifted to the
unaccented part of a measure or of a beat, like this,—♩♩♩, ♩♩♩, ♩♩♩. All
sorts of combinations are possible in this rhythm, and it is this
variety that is fascinating in a good jazz tune.
The banjo is the instrument of the southern plantation Negro, and when a
crowd gathers for a “sing” or a dance, the hands and feet take the place
of drums and keep time to the syncopated tune and is called, “patting
Juba.”
A curious dance was the “shout” which flourished in slave days. It took
place on Sunday or on prayer meeting nights and was accompanied by hymn
singing and shouting that sounded from a distance like a melancholy
wail. After the meeting the benches were pushed back, old and young, men
and women, stood in the middle of the floor and when the “sperichel” (or
spiritual) was started they shuffled around in a ring. Sometimes the
dancers sang the “sperichel” or they sang only the chorus, and for a
distance of half a mile from the praise house the endless thud, thud of
the feet was heard.
In the beautiful Spiritual, the song of the Negro, we see also the
syncopated rhythm. The religious song is practically the only song he
has, and he sings it at work, at play, at prayer, when he is sick and
his friends sing it after he is dead. To our ears the words are crude
and homely, but always reveal a fervent religious nature as well as a
childlike faith.
No doubt you have heard _Nobody Knows the Trouble I See_, _Deep River_,
_Swing Low Sweet Chariot_, _Go Down Moses_, _Weeping Mary_ and many
others.
Such a wealth of feeling and beauty could not fail to leave its mark in
the land where it was born.
Just how it will bear fruit we cannot say, but it is making its appeal
more and more, not only to the American, but to the foreign composers as
well, and they believe that this music,—the syncopated rhythm that the
American is at last developing in his own way—in spite of its humble
origin, is the one new thing that America has given to the growth of
music, and they envy us that wealth of rhythm that seems to be born in
the American.
Music Becomes a Youth