Note 1 — Chapter I · OUR ENGLISH INHERITANCE

The sentence quoted opens Frederic Louis Ritter's 'Music in America.' In the next sentence the author admits the prior arrival of the Cavaliers on these shores, but hastens to add that they exercised very little influence on American musical development. 'It is a curious historical fact,' he says, 'that earnest interest in musical matters was first taken by the psalm-singing Puritans.' It is curious. We quote further: 'From the crude form of a barbarously sung, simple psalmody there rose a musical culture in the United States which now excites the admiration of the art-lover, and at the same time justifies the expectation and hope of a realization, at some future epoch, of an American school of music.' Quantum sufficit. Louis C. Elson, in his 'History of American Music,' also tells us that 'the true beginnings of American music ... must be sought in ... the rigid, narrow, and often commonplace psalm-singing of New England.' If these things be so, well may the American composer exclaim in the words of the immortal Sly 'Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!'