IRVING BERLIN, the composer of many of our popular songs, credits the automobile with having profoundly influenced the “ragtime” music of the present day. Motorists often speak of the music of the engine when it is running smoothly. Once when this expression was made in the presence of Mr. Berlin, a guest of the owner, remarked:

“The engine seems to have plenty of action, but I can't see where you get the music.”

Thinking of it afterward Mr. Berlin says that he realized that action and music are practically synonymous and that there is an actual kinship between music and motor cars.

“Modern American music,” says Mr. Berlin in discussing the influence of the automobile upon the new American music in Durant's Standard, “has as much lilt in its particular way as the hum of the motor car. But it would be very wrong to apparently limit action in music to the modern forms of syncopation, for the very earliest forms of tribal chants, the weird sounds from which music must have had its inception, contained action.

“The advancing centuries brought the development of music, and always action played its part. Wagner, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt, all the great masters of music, knew the value of movement. Through their immortal harmonies we hear the breeze as it brushes the trees of the forest, the storm roars its challenge, or the Summer stream murmurs over the fields. Crashing out to us come the songs of triumphant armies, or perhaps the changing notes tell of twilight, with lovers dancing on the village green. But all these sounds speak of action.

“The automobile, however, introduced to motivation a new method of movement. All the old rhythm was gone, and in its place was heard the hum of an engine, the whirr of wheels, the explosion of an exhaust. The leisurely songs that men hummed to the clatter of horses' hoofs did not fit into this new rhythm—the new age demanded new music for new action.”

“The country speeded up. Every industry was quick to take advantage of the additional efficiency that the automobile offered. Men and women stirred themselves, and as distances melted they learned more and more about the rest of their country. They had sung ballads of Old Black Joe working in his cotton fields of white—now they went to see him at work—just as they went to see the famed flowers of California.

“The slow-timed tunes were banished. The age of modern syncopation had arrived.”

Syncopated harmony, he is careful to explain, is not new. Much of the music of the Orient contains a strain that can be classified as a forerunner of present-day “jazz.” The old chants of the orthodox Jewish religion are written in a time which is frequently syncopated, and a rhythm will be found in the unwritten tunes used for tribal festivals by the natives of the South Seas and Africa that resembles modern American popular music.

“The modern music, or syncopated harmonies,” he adds, “had its inception about fifteen years ago, a few years after the start of the popularization of the automobile. I have been told that my own composition, 'Alexander's Ragtime Band,' was the first notable piece of syncopation. With all due modesty, I think that I can say that I was the first to write a popular song that was a decided change from the conventional music of that time. The average chorus was four or eight lines in length, and written in rhyme. Syncopation allows for broken harmonies, 'ragged time,' as the musicians called it, a name which was quickly seized upon by the public and shortened to 'ragtime.'

“Of course there was a howl of criticism against this new form of music, but even destructive criticism can be a healthy stimulation, and the new form of music became instead of a novelty an accepted type of harmony.

There is another point of similarity between the motor car and modern American music. Both have swept the world, and they are essentially American. Go to the big cities of Europe or to the wilds of the East. Practically every car you see is American made. Turn into the homes of the people in these same localities and you will find that they are familiar with what is popularly called 'jazz.' And it will be American jazz, for, while song writers of every nation have tried to imitate our popularization of syncopation, they have never succeeded. The 'jazz' of London or Paris is the jazz of New York and Chicago.

“An international critic of the arts said that our modern American music was the only thing new in the world of the arts. Music and motor cars! To the average thinker one typifies art, the other industry. Taken together they show how closely related are our modern American arts and industries.”