A TTEMPTS to introduce elements of non-European music into musical compositions of the West reach rather far back. Early examples may be found in the so-called janizary pieces of Mozart and Beethoven (e.g., the Chor der Janitscharen in Mozart's Entfiihrung aus dem Serail and the well-known Rondo alla turca from his Sonata in A major; and the Turkish March and Chorus of Dervishes from Beethoven's Ruins of Athens). As related examples, employing certain rhythmic and melodic peculiarities of Hungarian Gypsy music, we may cite works of Haydn and Schubert. All these attempts, however, were little more than products of artistic sport [artistische Spielerei], introduced occasionally into some work, but without significance as regards the musical taste or style of its period. With the beginnings of Romanticism, the picture changed. Both, Romantic literature and music, showed the influence, often very strongly, of European and exotic folklore. Romanticism discovered, to some extent, that there are peoples whose artistic expressions-even if different in nature and situated upon another level of development from those of central and western Europe-still possess so much that is novel and redolent of the soil that they command careful consideration. The direct result of this discovery was that peoples began to figure in European musical history who had previously played no r61e in itor no important one-and who now, as the sources of new national schools, began to color the further development of European music. Among such peoples were the Russians, Scandinavians, and Czechs. This fact is important, because it was directly the Romanticists' interest in folk-lore which, intellectually, paved the way for the admission into European art-music of genuinely exotic elements-that is, not European ones. Simultaneously, still another important factor was at work. This was the political and economic expansion which set in during the nineteenth century and which, supported by rapid technical advances, reduced the distances between the several continents. Europe came into closer contact with cultures of which, in the past, she had known only through a few books and travelers' reports. If it was the Near East