Show IDIJr Iffithtr nf iliuur tu Ailtrr ira By CHARLES CAMILLE SAINTSAENS Crest Trench MuilcUn Let ino say at the outset that I aril unconscious of geographical political or even racial divisions in music Berlin from whence I have just come is the t same to me professionally as New York In arrang t ing my programmes and in playing or conducting them I forget whether I am in Chicago or London in I Boston or Vienna in my native Paris or Egyptian t Cairo My acquaintance with American music as such is too limited to permit even generalizations on the subject Obviously you have here all the elements which make for greatness in this as in other arts What could possibly be safer than to predict great things even the i greatest for the American music of the future The young American musician of original talent will doubtless learn to understand that a tree or a flower really flourishes only in its native soil Probably his greatest difficulty today is the fight for independence independ-ence to rid himself of the obsession of old world tradition and names What he learns abroad today is at best little more than the mere secondary sec-ondary means of expression and that he might equally well acquire at home If there is a musical message for America it is for him the young Americangrown composer to interpret not for me You say that ethnologists trace a remote similarity between the barbaric bar-baric notes of the Indian and what passes for the civilized music of Japan As for the latter I must confess it is totally incomprehensible to my ear If there were a distinctive exotic kind of music as Japanese as ours is European Eu-ropean does it seem that Puccinis opera of Madam Butterfly for instance in-stance would be downright Italian as it is Certainly there are differences of temperament or in the ways of expressing ex-pressing it between Europeans and Americans Yet after all these differences dif-ferences arc mainly superficial |