Half a century ago, when frail, poetic Edward MacDowell was No. 1 U. S. composer, the models for high-brow music were Brahms, Grieg, Wagner. Just before World War I, Kulturbolschewiks Arnold Schonberg and Igor Stravinsky (TIME, March 11) led a revolution against musical romanticism. When the revolution was over, U. S. composers still found themselves writing European music. Such U. S. composers as Aaron Copland and John Alden Carpenter tried to go native by using jazz tunes, but only the tunes were American. The musical grammar and syn tax still sounded like Brahms or Stravinsky. Today there is still probably no...
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