"The German musicians from whom Foster got inspiration to work were Beethoven, Glück, Weber, Mozart. He was a student of all of them and of the Italian school also, as some of his songs show. Foster's first and only music teacher--except in the 'do-re-mi' exercises in his schoolboy life--testifies that Foster's musical apprehension was so quick, his intuitive grasp of its science so complete that after a short time there was nothing he could teach him of the theory of composition; that his pupil went straight to the masters and got illustration and discipline for himself.
"This was to be expected of a precocious genius who had written a concerted piece for flutes at thirteen, who was trying his wings on love songs at sixteen, and before he was twenty-one had composed several of the most famous of his American melodies, among them Oh Susannah, Old Dog Tray and Old Uncle Ned. As in other things he taught himself music, but he studied it ardently at the shrines of the masters. He became a master of the art of song writing. If anybody cares to hunt up the piano scores that Verdi made of songs from his operas in the days of Foster he will find that the great Italian composer's settings were quite as thin as Foster's and exhibited not much greater art. It was the fault of the times on the piano, not of the composers. It was not till long afterward that the color capacities of the piano were developed. As Foster was no pianist, but rather a pure melodist, he could not be expected to surpass his times in the management of the piano, the only 'orchestra' he had. It will not do to regard Foster as a crude musician. His own scores reveal him as the most artful of 'artless' composers.
"It is not even presumption to speak of him in the same breath with Verdi. The breadth and poignancy of Foster's melodies entitle them to the highest critical respect, as they have received worldwide appreciation from great musicians and plain music lovers. Wherever he has gone he has reached the popular heart. Here in the United States he has quickened the pulse beats of four generations. But this master creator of a country's only native songs has invariably here at home been apologized for as a sort of 'cornfield musician,' a mere banjo strummer, a hanger-on at barrooms where minstrel quartets rendered his songs and sent the hat round. The reflection will react upon his country; it will not detract from the real Foster when the constructive critic appears to write his brief and unfortunate life. I am not contending that he was a genius of the highest rank, although he had the distinction that great genius nearly always achieves, of creating a school that produced many imitators and established a place apart for itself in the world's estimation. In ballad writing he did for the United States what Watteau did for painting in France. As Watteau found a Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, so Foster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish, German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodic strain forever impressed upon it as pure American.