Seriously, if our rising young composers--isn't it funny they are always
spoken of as rising? I suppose it's because they retire so late--read
Hanslick carefully, much good would accrue. It is all well enough to
call your work something or other, but do not expect me nor my neighbor
to catch your idea. We may be both thinking about something else,
according to our temperaments. I may be probably enjoying the form, the
instrumentation, the development of your themes; my neighbor, for all we
know, will in imagination have buried his rich, irritable old aunt, and
so your pæan of gladness, with its brazen clamor of trumpets, means for
him the triumphant ride home from the cemetery and the anticipated joys
of the post-mortuary hurrah.