Contemporary American Composers is Rupert Hughes’s survey of music in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, offering critical estimates and biographies of the principal living American composers. Hughes argues for the worth of a national musical tradition then often dismissed beside European achievement.
Generously illustrated in its original edition with portraits and musical examples, the book documents a wide range of figures, from concert composers to writers of song and church music. As a snapshot of American musical life at a formative moment, it preserves names and reputations that later histories often neglected, and remains a useful reference for the early growth of American music.