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 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) have brought a new quality into music, a spirit analogous to that to be found in the best