“Maidanovo, September 13th (25th), 1885.
“ ... Annie, first of all I am going to flatter you a little and then ask you to do something for me. After much searching and trouble I have rented a very pretty house here in Maidanovo.... I am now furnishing this house ... now ... some good people ... have promised ... if I am not mistaken ... that is, how shall I express myself?... to sew ... woollen portières ... or curtains ... that is, I would like to know ... perhaps at once ... if you would ... I, in a word ... oh! how ashamed I am ... write please, how what ... now, I hope, I have made myself understood....”[108]
To A. S. Arensky.
“Maidanovo, September 25th (October 7th), 1885.
“Dear Anton Stepanovich,—Pardon me if I force my advice upon you. I have heard that 5/4 time appears twice in your new Suite. It seems to me that the mania for 5/4 time threatens to become a habit with you. I like it well enough if it is indispensable to the musical idea, that is to say if the time signature and rhythmic accent respectively form no hindrance. For example, Glinka, in the chorus of the fourth act of A Life for the Tsar, clearly could not have written in anything else but 5/4 time: here we find an actual 5/4 rhythm that is a continual and uniform change from 2/4 to 3/4:
“It would be curious, and certainly ‘an effort to be original,’ to write a piece with a simple rhythm of 2/4 or 3/4 time in 5/4 time. You will agree with me that it would have been very stupid of Glinka to have written his music thus: