also mildly criticized.

The thrice fatal day arrived, the rehearsals had been torture, and one
night the audience at a great concert had the pleasure of reading on the
program Browning's _Childe Roland_ in full, and wondering what it was
all about. My symphonic poem would tell them all, as I firmly believed
in the power of music to portray definitely certain soul-states, to
mirror moods, to depict, rather indefinitely to be sure, certain
phenomena of daily life.

My poem was well played. It was only ninety minutes long, and I sat in a
nervous swoon as I listened to the _Childe Roland_ theme, the squat
tower theme, the sudden little river motif, the queer gaunt horse theme,
the horrid engine of war motif, the sinister, grinning, false guide
subject--in short, to all the many motives of the poem, with its
apotheosis, the dauntless blast from the brave knight as he at last
faced the dark tower.

This latter I gave out with twelve trombones, twenty-one bassett horns
and one calliope; it almost literally brought down the house, and I was
the happiest man alive. As I moved out I was met by the critic of _The
Disciples of Tone_, who said to me:

"Lieber Kerl, I must congratulate you; it beats Richard Strauss all
hollow. _Who_ and what was _Childe Roland_? Was he any relation to
Byron's _Childe Harold_? I suppose the first theme represented the
'galumphing' of his horse, and that funny triangular fugue meant that
the horse was lame in one leg and was going it on three. Adieu; I'm in a
hurry."

Triangular fugue! Why, that was the crossroads before which Childe
Roland hesitated! How I hated the man.

I was indeed disheartened. Then a lady spoke to me, a musical lady, and
said:

"It was grand, perfectly grand, but why did you introduce a funeral
march in the middle--I fancied that Childe Roland was not killed until
the end?"

The funeral march she alluded to was not a march at all, but the
"quagmire theme," from which queer faces threateningly mock at the
knight.

"Hopeless," thought I; "these people have no imagination."

The next day the critics treated me roughly. I was accused of cribbing
my first theme from _The Flying Dutchman_, and fixing it up
rhythmically for my own use, as if I hadn't made it on the spur of an
inspired moment! They also told me that I couldn't write a fugue; that
my orchestration was overloaded, and my work deficient in symmetry,
repose, development and, above all, in coherence.

This l