Abstract

Music in America

The article provides information on the book "The Dilemma of American Music," by Daniel Gregory Mason. According to Mason, music in America is a thing far more worth working for than "American Music." In this new collection of essays he pleads the cause of amateur orchestras and glee clubs, of hand-made music in the home as opposed to mechanical instruments, and urges the plain man to participate in the actual production of music instead of merely listening to professionals. "The act of doing the thing oneself, however crudely and stumblingly," he says wisely, "gives one an insight into it that one can never get by hiring someone else to do it." There are illuminating papers on rhythm, on the tyranny of the bar line, and on the setting of English texts.