Culture is one of the most important components, which form every nation. It is one occurrence that distinguishes and unites all the people who live in the world. But it is impossible to imagine the culture without music, a very big part of our life. Every nation has one's own music and I think that inside music are concluded all peculiarities of the nation, it is contain the key for understand the soul of people. When I was associated with foreigners (they were Americans) I noted that they liked our folk music, they frequently listened it and each of them had without fail an audiocassette with Russian folk music. They told me about the most popular in United States Russian singers and composers. Our pop music is not famous outside Russia. But many people from other countries love our folk and classical music. On the contrary we know nothing about American folk and classical music and I would like to discuss about it. By my opinion a serious study of American music is arrestingly important at this time. Music has become on of American leading industries American performing standards are probably now higher than anywhere else in the world, and Americans are making rapid strides in music education. How large a part in all this activity is American music to play? How good is it? How does it differ from Russian music? There are many signs of an awakened interest in American composition. More of it is performed, published, and recorded than ever before. This interest is not confined to the United States alone. During the past few years Russians who have always liked American popular music (like Brithney Spears, Madonna, Michael Jackson) have discovered that America have several composers in the serious field well worth its attention. As for the foundations, fortunes are being spent to discover, to train and to encourage American native talent. We could imagine a pattern, which would include Billings, Harris and Gershwin. Each of them contributed substantially to American musical tradition, and when American can grasp their interrelationship they perceive that there is indeed an American music, a hardy one just beginning to fell its strength and destined to stand beside their other contributions to world culture. I would like to tell about my three favorites American composers. George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn on September 25, 1989. He was by no means a prodigy, and his musical education was spasmodic. He took lessons at the piano and later studied harmony. In his teens, he acquired a job as song plugger at one of the largest publishing houses. Before long he was writing songs of his own; and in 1919, he was the proud present of a "hit" that swept the country - Swanee. His rise as one of the most successful composers for the Broadway stage was rapid. In 1924, he composed his first serious work in the jazz idiom, the historic "Rhapsody in Blue" the success of which made Gershwin famous throughout the world of music. After that he divided his activities between writing popular music for the Broadway stage (and later for the Hollywood cinema) and serious works for concert hall consumption. In both fields, he was extraordinary successful and popular. He died in Hollywood on June 11, 1937, after an unsuccessful operation on the brain. It is mainly since Gershwin's death that complete awareness of his musical importance has become almost universal. The little defects in his major works - those occasional awkward modulations, the strained transitions, the obscure instrumentation - no longer appear quite so important as they did several decades ago. What many did not realize then and what they now know - is that the intrinsically vital qualities of Gershwin's works reduce these technical flaws to insignificance. The music is so alive, so freshly conceived, and put down on paper with such spontaneity and enthusiasm that is youthful spirit refuses to age. The capacity of this music to enchant and magnetize audiences' remains as great today, even with, familiarity, as it was yesterday, when it came upon us with the freshness of novelty. That he had a wonderful reservoir of melodies was, of course, self-evident when Gershwin was alive. What was not quite so obvious then was that he had impressed his identity on those melodies - his way of shaping a lyric line, his use of certain rhythmic phrases, the piquant effect of some of his accompaniments - so that they would always remain recognizably his. Other my favorite American composers is Roy Harris. Few American composers of XX century and our time have achieved so personal a style as Roy Harris. His music is easily identified by many stylistic traits to which he has doing through his creative development: the long themes which span many bars before pausing to catch a breath, the long and involved development in which the resources of variation and transformation are utilized exhaustively, the powerfully projected contrapuntal lines, the modal harmonies and the asymmetrical rhythms are a few of the qualities found in most Harris's works. Through Harris has frequently employed the forms of the past (toccata, passacaglia, fugue, etc), has shown a predilection for ancient modes, and en occasion has drawn thematic inspiration from Celtic folk songs and Protestant hymns, he is modern in spirit. His music has a contemporary pulse, the cogent drive and force of present -day living; there is certainly nothing archaic about it. More important still, it is essentially American music, even in those works in which he does not draw his ideas from folk or popular music. The broad sweep of his melodies suggests the vast plains of Kansas, the open spaces of the West. The momentum of his rhythmic drive is American in its nervousness and vitality. But in subtler qualities, too, Harris's music is the music of America. "The moods", Harris once wrote, "which seem particularly American to me are noisy ribaldry, then sadness, a groping earnestness which amount to suppilance toward those deepest spiritual yearnings within ourselves; there is little grace or mellowness in our midst". Such moods as noisy ribaldry, sadness, groping earnestness are caught in Harris's music, and to these moods are added other American qualities; youthful vigor, health, optimism and enthusiasm. Harris was born in the Lincoln country, Oklahoma, on February 12, 1898. ............